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

Community

A community that I identify myself with that is mediated by the Internet is the social networking site Facebook. Facebook is completely mediated by the Internet. Every interaction that takes place through this social networking cite takes place on the web. However, interactions that take place through using Facebook as the medium, may lead to interaction between people face to face.

Facebook can be used in order to maintain relationships with people you currently don’t see as much as you used to as a result of distance or a busy lifestyle, or in order to develop new relationships.

Prior to going to college, I was never into the whole online social networking ordeal. I never made a MySpace account and laughed at those who did. I found it to be so irrelevant. In my opinion, sites like MySpace only purpose was to give people a confidence boost. It was a competition, who had the most friends, who had the most random people telling them how beautiful they were and who could create the most elaborate homepage. I didn’t see any real benefits to having an account.

When I first created my Facebook account, I did so in order to meet people that would be going to the same college as myself. I’m from Long Island and taking the big step of moving 8 hrs away from home was very scary for me, I figured if I could recognize a few familiar faces from Facebook I would be a little more comfortable.

Facebook allows users to communicate through a multitude of different applications. Facebook has a number of features for users to interact with. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see, Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification that tells a user that they have been poked),Photos, where users can upload albums and photos, and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. A user's Wall is visible to anyone who is able to see that user's profile, which depends on their privacy settings. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only. When I first created my account and was using it primarily as a way of meeting new people, I would often receive messages like “ hey I see we’re both going to Buffalo next year, where are you leaving on campus?” The ability to write on others walls and introduce yourself without the fears of face-to-face interactions enabled users to meet lots of people and create a lot of acquaintance-like relationships.

Now, I used my Facebook account for different purposes. Mainly I use the account to keep in touch with my home friends while I’m at school; the complete opposite reason of why I created the account. Facebook allows me to see what my friends are up to while I’m at school, through photo albums and posts written on their wall. This allows me to remain close to friends that I am separated from by distance, because it gives me the sense of still knowing what’s going on in their lives and enables me to make comments about what their doing or just to say hi so that I am still involved in their life.

Another major aspect of Facebook when creating or maintaining relationships is how quickly and easily it is used. It only takes a few minutes to write on someone’s wall or look at someone’s pictures and comment on them. Also, you can do this while doing a multitude of other things, in contrast sitting down and calling someone and listening to what’s going on in their life, this can be very time consuming. Also, when interacting with someone through a social networking site there is little to no fear of damaging your face. The aspect of rejection is greatly decreased when communicating over the Internet. As a result its easier to meet new people or say things you would normally feel weird saying in person.

Popular social networking sites, including MySpace and Facebook, are changing the human fabric of the Internet.

Citations:
1. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1463 October 16, 2008
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook October 16, 2008

Different Identites on the Internet

According to Judith S. Donath, identity plays a key role in virtual communities. In order to understand an evaluate an interaction one must know the identity of the person they are communicating with. However, the virtual world of internet communities, it is very easy for one to manipulate or lie about who they really are in the physical world.
I have two online identities. One is portrayed through my Facebook profile and account and the other is portrayed through my screen name that I use when communicating with others via instant messaging.

My Facebook account establishes much more of an internet identity then my screen name. My Facebook profile reveals a lot of personally identifiable information. For example, the more basic things it lists are my home town, birthday, and whether or not I’m in a relationship. More specific personal characteristics of my profile are lists of my favorite movies and TV shows, groups I’m involved in, and where I live while at school. There are also visual representations of myself provided by the hundreds of pictures of me that are attached to my profile page. This is not an avatar because it is an actual photograph instead of an icon-sized graphic image. Therefore, it depicts more personal information.

I think people establish their reputations on Facebook by who they have in their “friends”. Just because your Facebook friends with someone doesn’t mean you have ever even met the person or had an type of interaction with them. However, the friends you accept or request on Facebook usually have similar likes or interests as you and portray they type of people you normally do hang out with. Your friend list would not make you identifiable as worthy of trust or not, but it might influence someone when deciding whether or not they want to be your friend. Once you accept someone’s friend request, they can see your Wall. This enables them to see who you are talking to on this forum and who is talking to you. This is another tool that can be used to make judgments about peoples personal identity through their virtual identity.

Having so many pictures of yourself on the internet, free to the hundreds of people you are “friends” with, can be dangerous. I have a friend whose identity was assumed on MySpace. Someone took some of the pictures she had posted in this forum and established a different profile under a different name using her pictures. This was a very annoying and frustrating ordeal for my friend, because the person put the profile on a private, so since my friend was not friends with her alias she had no way of contacting the person to tell them to delete the profile they had created.

I myself don’t have an e-bay account but my dad does. He uses his screen name as his pseudonyms. This does reveal some personal indentify because it includes part of his name. e-bay, unlike Facebook, is a forum that allows users to establish a reputation, which allows others to decide whether or not they consider you to be trust worthy. After you sell something or buy something the person who you interacted with in the exchange is given the opportunity to provide feedback on how the exchange went. A person who has a lot of negative feedback, for example, they did not send a product on time, they mis-advertised the product they were selling, or did not respond to bids made on the product, will likely be marked as untrustworthy and people will not do business with that person. On the other hand, a person with a lot of positive feedback, who sends things quickly and easily, uses pay-pal, and correctly advertises their products, will be marked as a trustworthy person and people will use them without worrying that they have just fallen victim to a scam.

All in all, virtual identities can establish great forums to meet new people, and in the case of e-bay obtain products at a discounted price. However, you must be very careful. Chat rooms and other internet forums can be very dangerous. It is so easy to create a false identity on the internet.. ever see To Catch a Predator?, there are some sick people out there. Internet identities have become so extreme that there are now psychiatric help centers for people who have lost their sense of reality because they are so raped up in their internet identities. BE CAREFUL!

is it possible to get a job after college if you have a Facebook account??!!!

We’ve all heard the horror story about someone not getting a job because of their employer looking up their social networking account and finding pictures or information about them that lead the employer to decide not to hire them despite all of their great credentials. Many people feel that this is a violation of their privacy. Everyone has a different face that they display to others when at work or out with friends, and I don’t think it’s an employer’s business to explore that alternate face. In the case of social networking, I would define internet privacy as the right to express a social identity that is kept separate from your professional identity and does not affect or hinder your hire ability.

According to Danah Boyd, mediated publics have four properties that are unique to them. Two properties that are effecting those looking for jobs are persistence and searchability. Boyd identifies persistence within mediated publics through the idea that what you say sticks around. This means that something I say or do now while utilizing Facebook is still going to be their when I’m 40. This can be very detrimental because an employer may see something that you said or did and decide not to hire you because of it, even if you have grown out of that stage of your life. For example, say I am looking for a job an my employer looks up my Facebook account and comes across a picture of me wasted at a bar and then makes the assumption that I am a drunk who goes out all the time and is going to come to work late and hung over. This isn’t fare because I am a young college student now. Everyone goes out and has a bit too much to drink every now and then, but we are young this is our time to be crazy and make mistakes. This shouldn’t be a reflection of my work ethics when I’m 22 and entering the work force.

Searchability on the hand, is explained by Boyd by the fact that someone can look up your account and find out where your hanging out and other information about you. With the click of the mouse a potential boss can find out where you go when you are not at work, who your friends are, your sexual orientation, and a multitude of other things that are displayed on your profile. If an employer deems this information necessary to know before hiring you, I feel they are greatly violating your privacy. None of this information should be relevant to an employer. That’s what resumes and interviews are for, to demonstrate to employers what they need to know about you when making the decision of whether or not to hire you.

Since I have yet to enter the professions work force I don't have any specific scenario involving myself where an employer looked up information about me on the internet via a social networking site. However, last year after a bunch of girls in my sorority graduated they deleted their Facebook accounts in order to stop employers from using their accounts as references when reviewing their applications. I found this to be pretty ridiculous. Not only because I find this to be an invasion of privacy, but also because social networking sites enable people to stay in touch when divided by distance and without an account the termination of a friendship is much more likely.

According to news feed researcher, in New York written references could become a thing of the past for managers with one in five saying they use social networking sites to research job candidates, resulting in one in three candidates being dismissed after what they discover. This can be very scary because so many people have social networking accounts that they utilize for social and entertainment purposes without taking them too seriously, and now they are resulting in serious repercussions.

Here are some very alarming statistics provided by news feed researcher that I will leave you with:

According to a survey by online job site CareerBuilder.com of 3,169 hiring managers

。 22 % of hiring managers screen potential candidates via social networking profiles, up from 11 % in 2006.

。34% of the managers who do screen candidates on the internet found content that made them drop the candidate.

。41% of hiring managers sited posting information about drinking and drugs as the reason for dropping a candidate.

。40% of concerns were candidates posting provocative or inappropriate photographs or information.

Citation: boyd, danah. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”
Knowledge Tree 13, May. http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/?page_id=28

Music Revolution

The first thing that comes to mind for me when referrying to copyrighting infringements on the Internet is Napster and music downloading. When Napster came on it experienced great sucess. Like many new revolutions in the Internet it started from the brilliant ideas of a college student and soon became a huge business. According to Wikipedia, this technology enable people to share MP3 format song files quickly and easily. Unfortunately people in the music industry were not happy and they accused Napster of massive copyright violation. 

The music industry was so upset because Napster enable people to download song for free eliminating the need for people to actually buy their albums and singles. Their argument was that artists and the recording industry owned the music and Napster was giving away their property for free.  When I herd about this I honestly felt like musicians were being very greedy. Most artists make more moeny then doctors and layaers and they were having a tantrum over a 99-cent music download. Meanwhile, most of the users of Nebster were college students who you use and thing to save a buck and their idols were trying to take this away from them. The American heavy metal band Metallica brought the situation to the next level by bring Napster to court. According to FreeAdvice, the Ninth Circuit Court reviewed and uphealth the Norther Disrick Court of California ruling on the injunction, which shut down Napster. The courts ruling stated that Napster was guilty of contributory infringement because the company knew that infinging activities were taking place and the system comtributed to the infinging activities by enabling them. Napster was forced to shut down but it still operates, not with nearly as much popularity and success as before, under a different title that charges its users for the downloads. 

In 1998 the Digital Millenium Copyright Act became a law. Copyright Infringement Lyability Limitation is the one of five titles that make up this law which applies to file-sharing dowloading. The act creates limitations on a liablility of online service providers for copyright infringement when engaging in certain types of activity, such as downloading music. 

Since then, many more different providers have been established to perfrom that same task. Two of the more popular of all the providers are Limewire and DC++ which still enable users to download music and movies, which is the new big thing, for free. However, everyone knows a friend or a friend of a friend that has ben arrested or gotten into some kind of trouble for excessively downloading materal from these serivce providers. If you are one of the unlucky few, you are contacted and sued for an astronomical amount of money. This is the music industry's way of using fear in the hopes of prevending others from accessing their music without paying for it. 

However, I dont think the reason why people use these providers is out of fear of being cought by the goverment, no one think this would actualy happen to them. I download music every day without the feeling that I'm doing some sort of crime. These programs slow down your computer and sometimes give you computer a virus. That is why most stay away from these programs. However, new providers liek YouTube have provided users with the ability to listen pretty much any music track or music video for free without having to the worry of downloading something onto your computer abd without the fear of being prosecuted for it. YouTube accomlishes this through their Copyright Infringement policy. The policy requires all users to confirm that they own the copyright or have permission form the copyright holder to upload content. If a user violates these regulatons the content they upload is immediately removed, and repeated violater are bared from accessing YouTube. 

Com125 Assignment2: You've Got Mail!

I believe one of the biggest revolutions in the Internet is the invention of e-mail. E-mail enabled people to share and exchange information quicker then ever imagined. No longer does one have to rely on the postal system or have to make individual phone calls in order to contact people or to share information. Today, e-mail is the most widely used application on the Internet. 

According to Dave Crocker, in 1971, Tomlinson developed the first ARPANET e-mail application when he updated SNDMSG by adding a program called CPYNET which was capable of copying files over the network. Tomlinson put together the user and host names, "user@host" for example, in order to extend the addressing to the network. he was able to establish the basic transactional model that still defines what e-mail is today. 

However, at the time that these breakthroughs in innovation were taking place, not many people even knew anything about the Internet let alone how to send e-mails. The Internet was strictly a medium used by those scientifically inclined to know about it. In order for e-mail to become more mainstream, like the Internet, it needed to become more user friendly. According to Richard T. Griffiths of Leiden University, the following innovations were developed in order to establish e-mail as the commonly used application that it is today. First, there was a listing of messages, indexed according to subject and date. Next, came the ability to selectively delete messages. Followed by, the ability to receive and send mail from the same program. Previously, there were two different programs needed in order to send and receive e-mails . Next game the ability to forward messages, which automatically included the senders address in the message. Finally, came the ability to file and save messages and  a standard protocol to allow the exchange of messages between programs. 

A single e-mail with important information could now be sent throughout an entire company in seconds. I think e-mail has had both positive and negative effects on the work environment. on one hand e-mail enables everyone within a company to receive and share information very efficiently. This is good because it enables everyone within an organization to have a voice, expressing his or her ideas, inputs and goals for an organization. This generates new innovative ideas and collaborations within a company. If everyone has the ability to make suggestions the company has a better chance of success. On the other hand, e-mail eliminates the need to communicate face-to-face. This medium makes the workplace less personal. One becomes simply a number or an e-mail address instead of an identity with a personality, a face and a name. No longer do you have to actually know your fellow co-workers in order to share ideas with them. I find this to be one negative aspect of the e-mail revolution. I feel that it is important to establish relationships with your co-workers. This enables work to be more enjoyable, and I think it is important for one to look forward to going to work each day. 

Aside from the business environment, e-mail has enabled people to keep in touch that normally might have drifted apart. In the very fast passed lifestyle of the U.S. today, not many people have the time to cal someone to see how life is going for them. However, shooting someone a quick e-mail just so say hello is something one can do while at work and it only takes a few minutes.