My Comments

Somethings wrong with my UB e mail account so I figured this was my next best option. Hope you enjoy my comments have a great break!


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Fiber Optics

According to Wikipedia, fiber optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. Next, the pulses of light form electromagnetic carrier waves that are modulated to carry information.

The inventition of fiber optics came about in the 70s and led to a revolution in the telecommunications industry, contributing highly to the dawning of the Information Age.

Here in the United States we have been promised by phone companies that fiber optic connections would be replacing our current internet connection mechinizims, but that has yet to occur. However, other parts of the world have access to fiber optic networks, enableing them to use the internet at speeds we here cant even imagine, while still paying to same amount of money for internet access. Many Americans are not happy with these facts.

I understand why people would obviously want access to a faster network, but I dont think the situation is that serious. As far as accessing information on the Internet, web sites pop up in seconds and search engines that supply users with millions of links concerning a certain topic only take seconds to generate. People continue to want to get things faster, cheaper and more efficently. I'm not sure that we will ever be able to satisfy this constant desire for more.

One of the main points brought up in class about fiber optic networks was there ability to allow video conferences that would enable people to be more invovled in things like community meetings. This confused me a bit because cant we already do this utilizing the system we have in play now? I have a mac powerbook and I i chat with my parents at home, over 400 miles away, without any problem.

I feel like the fact that the internet now inables anyone with a video camera on there computer to compunicate with others to be quite amazing. I remember when I was little going to Elicote in Disney World and going on the planet earth ride that looks like a giant golf ball from the outside. While on the ride you see a little boy or girl (I dont really remember) saying goodnight to their parent through a video chat technology. I remember thinking, wow wouldnt that be cool. Never actually thinking that this would be possible anytime soon I am shoted and amazed by how easy it has become to do.

Maybe our Internet isnt as fast as others, but we are taking picg strides in new communication technologies and Im fine with that. We don't always need to be the best at everything and I'm sure eventually we will be hooked up to the fiber optic network, but I think right now our country has other things to worry about like our economy, a new president, the job market, a war.... unfortunately the list goes on and on.

Government 2.0

               I was very surprised when I read UltraAyla's post discussing President-Elect Obama's plans of recording his weekly address as a YouTube video that will be posed on his web site Change.gov. This has never been done before and is a great example of how video blogs and the internet in general has become such a big part of our lives. Also, I think this is a great demonstration of how Obama is very connected to the younger generation. One of his main point throughout his campaign for presidency was change and clearly his is changing a few things already

               As I continued to read the responding post to the question posed by UltraAyla, I noticed a lot of people felt that it was unnecessary to do this because most wont even bother watching the videos. However, it is my argument that although most probably wont watch it, some will, even if its only one person. Also, people are much more interested in what is going on with government and the news these days, so maybe people will watch. President Bush's candidacy left a lot of Americans upset with their government and questioning its authenticity. I think having a very open government is exactly what we need in order for Americans to gain back trust in their government. 

              I think the younger generations will be effected the most by this change. Older people don't utilize the internet very much because they didn't grow up with it the way that we did, so it's not an ordinary part of everyday life for them like it is for us. I think this is a great strategy to get younger people more involved in their government. Our generation gets a lot of slack for not being involved and not taking action towards what goes on in this country. By making governmental issues more accessible to us by putting them on a medium that is most used by young people, maybe we will be more involved. Young people don't know what's going on because they would rather watch a dumb reality show about a bunch of idiots then tune into the news. 

            Another advantage to broadcasting his addresses on his web site, is that his words will not be manipulated by a news forums. Channels like Fox are known to be very right winged conservative and often report news from their point of view. In this case, people can watch the videos and make their own judgements and reach their own conclusions about what is going on. 

           In conclusion, I think that what Obama is doing is great. He is continuing to hold true to his words and speeches about change. He truly is taking steps towards a new America, where things are open and transparent. His openness give me great confidence that he will be a good president that will do good things for our country, because he clearly has nothing to hide. GO BARACK! 

     

Net Neutrality A MUST!

According to Wikipedia, network neutrality is when a neutral broadband network is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached and on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonable degraded by other communication streams. Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor, defines network neutrality as, “A network design principle that allows maximally useful public information network that aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.”
Network neutrality is an issue causing a lot of debate. On one side of the debate is the broadband companies who feel that have the right to control what applications and content their subscribers are utilizing on the Internet. By doing this, they can make sure that users are obtaining data from their own sponsors or media interests. On the other side, are people that believe broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.
As we all know money makes the world go round, and certain companies are willing to pay phone and cable companies an extra fee in return for filtering content and favoring certain Web sites and applications. What it means to filter and favor certain web pages means that the content on those cites will load faster work more efficiently and overall work a lot better. While other web pages not favored by these companies will load very slowly or not at all. However, those on the side of non-neutrality argue that with Web sites like Google, the Internet is already bias against smaller competitors because popular cites like Google have a performance advantages.
I can see where both side are coming from in this debate. Broadband providers are right that big companies like Google do have great advantages over their smaller competitors, but at the same time the smaller competitors are not the ones that are going to be able to afford to pay off the phone and cable companies, therefore allowing non-neutrality definitely would not make the internet more equal in any way. It is my opinion that the Internet was created to allow anyone who has access to it to obtain information on whatever they want from wherever they want, and I think that principle should remain. The only reason why companies would be against neutrality when it comes to the Internet are greedy CEO’s looking for more money because apparently they aren’t already rich enough.
More than anything, I think network neutrality should 100% be mandatory in the United States. Countries like China and Saudi Arabia that are not democratic filter out news content on the Internet in order to prevent their citizens from obtaining information in order to suppress them. The US on the other hand is a democracy and although I know that the reason why companies here want to prevent their users from accessing certain information is to lower their competition with other websites that provide the same things and not to suppress us, we still should have the choice to go to do whatever we want.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality November 14th

Gaming.. get your moneys worth!

According to Wikipedia, virtual economies are an emergent economy existing in a virtual persistent world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an Internet game. Linden dollars is the official currency used by gamers exchanging things over the web. There are five different characteristics of virtual properties; rivalry, persistence, interconnectivity, secondary markets and value added by users (Wikipedia). When these qualities exist, virtual economies closely mirror contemporary economies.
When you first think of any of the aspects of virtual world, at least for me, they are viewed as fake, only existing for entertainment purposes. However, virtual economies are very real. The existence of economies in online games makes them more like the “real” world, because it makes them actually effect your real life since one uses “real” money to pay for virtual items. This is made very clear in the virtual game Second Life, because it provides users with Linden dollars to real dollars conversion. By providing users with different aspects of real life in the virtual world, these games are no longer seen as virtual reality, for many people virtual communities are their reality.
Second Life actively encourages players to buy and sell virtual property. According to Robert D. Hof, Second Life told users that if they paid them for virtual land, they could build whatever they wanted on the land and then charges others users Linden dollars in order to do things on the land, and then convert the Linden dollars into real money. This way both the owners of Second Life and its users are profiting from the existence of virtual economies in the game.
Every month, millions of Linden dollars are exchanged for goods and services created my Second Life users. One example of a virtual business a user could create is a bar. The person buys land, builds a bar, and then when different avatars come to the bar in order to socialize and meet others the creator of the bar and owner of the land can charge them for entering the bar and if two users are making good conversation one can possible buy the other a virtual drink in order to indicate that they are interested in the other person.
According to Wikipedia, this presented a problem for Second Life developers when Marc Bragg sued them in 2007. Bragg was kicked out of second life and turned around and filed a law suit against the developers because he had purchased virtual land from them when an active user and when he was banned from the game he no longer had access to property that belonged to him. In the end, Bragg was allowed back into the virtual world of Second Life and developers on longer advertised that purchasing virtual land meant that users owned that property.
World of Warcraft on the other hand, does not utilize the existences of a virtual economy. They actively discourage players to buy and sell virtual property using “real” money. Robert D. Hof thinks this is a result of the games long and interesting story lines, users spend all of their time going from one quest to the next. Adding in the element of a virtual economy would just be too much for this game. It isn't neccassary for this game and users enjoy it just as much without it.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982010.htm November 7, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy November 7, 2008

One web site that I found which enables Buffalo residents to blog about politics is BuffaloPundit. The web site is affiliated with WNYmedia.net. According to their website, the Western New York Media Network is an online micro news outlet which enables regional, political and cultural progress. They do this by providing the people of Western New York with a platform that enables them to advocate for causes they believe in, entertain readers with fun and viral content, inform people about news, events and organizations that are shaping the region in which they live, opinionate on the news and issues of the day, and to unite people with a common cause.

This web site is a great example of how the Internet enables communication between different people that normally probably would not have contact with each other. By broadening communication capabilities, more ideas and knowledge are shared, more relationships are created and more people can benefit from others experiences. I liked the way Brandis Griffin put it, “Weblogs, or blogs, began as online personal journals but have evolved to include editorials and information from journalists and political analysts. Readers and other bloggers can make comments on the posted topic or start a new "thread" of discussion.”

With the 2008 presidential election right around the corner, a very hot topic in the world of blogging is politics. Here is the information for the blog I chose.

Blog’s Title: Be the Change/We are the Change

Blog’s URL: http://wearethechange.wordpress.com/what-is-this-all-about/

Blogger’s Name: Diana

Blogger’s Occupation: Community Organizer at a progressive political and social organization called Citizen Action of NY

Blog’s Date of Birth: The first entry I found was on September 27^th

I tried looking up the website on technorati but didn’t really get any results back, but I’m not sure that I was doing it correctly.

I enjoyed Diana’s blog very much. She is an avid Obama supporter who organized Obama campaign activities as a volunteer in Buffalo. Her blog includes lots of links to other websites with more information about the topics she is discussing, as well as YouTube clips. She seems to be very down to earth and a bit of a comedian. She makes sarcastic remarks about McCain’s camp claiming that the NY Times is not a legitimate news source but how they fully endorse Fox News.

In 2004, Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell conducted a study to try and find out how blogs were effecting politics. Their main question was, “why do blogs sometimes have real political consequences, given the relatively low number of blog readers in the overall population?”(Drezner and Farrell 22). What they found, was that “blogs may frame political debates and create focal points for the media as a whole. Because certain opinion makers within the media take blogs seriously, they can have a much wider impact on politics” (Drezner and Farrell 22).

Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrel July 2004
http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/blogpaperfinal.pdf October 22nd 2008

Brandis Griffin November 2006
http://www.oread.ku.edu/2006/november/20/blogs.shtml October 22nd 2008

Diana
http://wearethechange.wordpress.com/ October 22nd 2008

Web Application Review

The interactive and productive Web site I choose to write my blog about was Google Maps. I had never used this application nor did I know it existed until class on Wednesday when the Internet privacy group did their presentation on it.

The sites URL is http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Google maps is a very user friendly functional internet application. You access it through Googles main homepage, in the left hand corner there are different search options including, Web, Images, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail and more. When you click on maps, it takes you to an image of the United States. Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively. As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page

Instead of other applications used to get directions like MapQuest for example, Google Maps provides users with 360 degrees of real life images of locations they are planning on visiting. They were able to accomplish this my deploying Google cars to drive all around different parts of the world recording images to store onto the Web sites data base.

I think this site is a great demonstration in how far we have come technologically. For people like me who have no clue how to read a map, this application is very useful and accommodating. However, not everyone is happy about this new development.

The Government believes that Google Maps is like a welcome sign for terrorists. Enabling anyone, possibly terrorists, to see monumental buildings, airports, cities, or marinas for example, from a variety of different points of view, can help them in planning different strategies for an attack against the US. However, it is Google’s response that they are taking pictures of public property and technically I guess there is no law that tells them they can’t do this.

Other people that have a problem with this new site, are the innocent bystanders who just so happen to end up in the pictures that the Google cars take. This might not be such a big deal, unless you leaving your mistresses house, picking your nose, picking a weggy, falling down or doing any other type of embarrassing thing. Google’s response to this was that they would blur the faces of those who sent complaints.

All in all, I think this is a great new way people can benefit from the internet. The way I look at it is, if terrorists are going to attack, shutting down Google Maps is not going to stop whatever horrible plan they are stirring up. And if you get caught in a compromising position, changes are you will probably never even know it’s up there and if you do find out about it and that’s the worst thing going on in your life, consider yourself lucky. I looked up my address and it just so happens that my dad is outside mowing the lawn and my sister is rollerblading , neither one of them know this and even if they did I doubt they would care. The images are so blurry that if I didn’t know them I wouldn’t be able to tell it was them or even know what that person really looked like based on the photo.

According to Cowen & Co., Google Maps is the de facto leader in the space, while its rivals, Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, and Live Search Maps have slipped well behind Google. I’m pretty sure that means it’s here to stay.

Citation:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps October 16, 2008
2. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/29/analyst-google-maps-reigns-supreme/ October 16, 2008