fitness blog day 2

Today I just explored the blog a little bit more. Reading the posts and articles and the associated comments attached to them. Nothing terribly exciting everyone seems to be friendly and willing to put in positive notes. Tomorrow I will probably think of some questions for a couple posts.

Blogging

Tonight as I sit and watch the election results flow in I have decided something. I picked my blog I will be observing and commenting on for the next five days for my fourth essay. It is called fitnessblackbook.com and its a blog all about fitness. I decided to pick this blog because I have been on a fitness binge lately. Also, I am tired of talking politics and arguing with people. In order to maintain my sanity I will be reading the blog threads and adding my thoughts and possibly asking question. We will see what the next few days bring politically at least I might get some good workout tips.

Today for my reaction blog I will be writing about chapter two in Blogging America. The chapter is titled The Blogs in Society. When I began reading this chapter I was trying to prepare myself for an uphill battle. It was not the case that I do not understand the reading it just seems to me that there is a lot of clutter in these chapters. I was heading home from NYC on a train leaving from Penn Station. As I walked down the aisle to my sit I saw many businessmen and women typing frantically on their computers and Blackberries. Could they to be bloggin?

 

 

            A big part about this chapter was how when people start off blogging they do so anonymously but eventually reveal who they are. The author says people are looking to be heard when they blog and since blogs are usually based on your life anyways what is the point of hiding behind a screen name. The author also points out that by 2010 there will be over five hundred million blogs. Although there are so many now and will be so many in the future this is still a younger generation technology. Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging sites probably will not have as big of a life changing effect on someone in there 70’s and older as it will on someone like me in there 20’s.

 

            My theory is that blogging has created an atmosphere for someone who used to write in a diary. Someone who wanted their life thoughts to be so personal although they wished someone would know how they felt. This is the beauty about blogging anyone can write anything and be anything they want in order to be seen. This is the most dangerous part about blogging about your life. The fact is humans are naturally critical and the author discusses this in two examples of people receiving threats from others on their blogs. When someone puts there lives online they need to realize there is a chance that someone out there could disagree with it greatly and needs to be willing to accept it when it happens. Blogging is becoming a huge part of the world and although I myself am not a blogger I can see myself being one. I just don’t have the topic to write about yet.

 

Barlow, Aaron. Blogging America. (2008). The Blogs in Society (Chapter 2).

Research

We all have different ways of looking for information online. With so many different search engines and databases available to extract from its almost guaranteed you will find what you are looking for. The question then becomes how reliable is the information who have received? In this essay I will be describing my search processes on an Internet medium that I am researching. I also will be describing specific ways of researching for that medium and how reliable the information I found turned out to be.

 

 

            For my Internet medium project I will be researching the photo sites Flickr, and Photobucket. Specifically how they came about and what makes them so popular. I will be using many different key words and seeing which is the best to gain the most valuable information. I will also be using many different search engines to try and broaden different search results. For my research I will be using the search engines Google.com and Yahoo.com for my web results. For print and news media I will be using the UAlbany library database. The reason I am choosing Google and Yahoo is because of there popularity. They are the two most popular search engines of my generation. Another plus to them being the most popular is the money they have to constantly upgrade their databases. This helps to give them perfect reach and perfect recall. (Zimmer, 2008) Having this two search engines at my disposal will give me a vast amount of information and, because this type of medium is relatively new the chances of academic books being written about them are much slimmer.  This is why I will also be using The UAlbany library databases.  Because the only major problem with the World Wide Web is that it is according to Whitaker “a huge national library- although one frequently lacking quality control.” (p. 48) Since UAlbany is a place of academics I can trust in its databases to have reliable and factual information instead of completely made up spam-ridden garbage

That you can find on the Internet. As I stated earlier though, my focus will be on searching with Google and Yahoo due to the limited academic resources that will be at hand for the specific medium I am researching.

 

 

            I guess I should tell you what Flickr and Photobucket are before I move on. Flickr and Photobucket are websites where you create your own profile and upload photos onto them for everyone to see. It is basically like myspace and facebook without all the words and other nonsense. Think of it as a blogging site but, only used for pictures and not words. Photobucket is a little bit different in that you can edit and change your photos drastically for the world to see.

 

            For my first search I went to Google and looked up History of Flickr. The results were a little bit varied but what came up was expected. The first website was Wikipedia.org because it had an exact match to the key words entered. After that there were a couple links to Flickr with history photos. After that came a couple news articles and some blog sites. According to the little counter at the top of Google’s screen about 19,000,000 results came up for the key words used. When I used the same key words at Yahoo as I did in Google the results were only moderately different. The first result was Wikipedia the next were some links to Flickr but, different from the ones on Google. Again though, the same couple news articles came up.  The major difference however, was that there were 97,5000,000 results instead of 19,000,000 like Google. I do not worry about this quantity difference. My focus is the quality of what is being given to me and by looking at the first page of results for each search engine are relatively the same. I attribute that fact to the engines perfect reach capability. (Zimmer, 2008) Without that it would be throwing garbage at me left and right instead of trying to match up exactly what I am looking for.

 

 

            What I would keep from the two search engines would definitely be the information from Wikipedia. Whatever news resources and articles I can find I will use and compare them to the ones I find on UAlbany’s library databases. The ones, which I will probably steer away from, are those of the blog sites. I will stay away from them only because they are opinionated statements and could detract from what I am trying to research. Search engines have many capabilities and with the everyday advancement of technology it will get closer and closer to being perfect every time.

 

 

 

 

 

CITATION:

 

Zimmer, Michael. (2008). The externalities of search 2.0: The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets web 2.0.  First Monday, 13. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2136/1944

 

Whitaker, Jason. (2002). The Internet: The basics (chapter 1). New York: Routledge.

Search 2.0 convenient but scary

Today for my class I read The externalities of search 2.0: The emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets web 2.0 by Michael Zimmer. This article has to do with search engines that work in the new web 2.0. The author calls this search engine 2.0. You are probably asking yourself well what is search engine 2.0 and how is it different from the old?

 

            To understand what search engine 2.0 is you have to understand what a search engine is. A search engine is websites like Yahoo, Google and, Ask. These websites contain a search browser where you can type in an inquiry of your desire such as the white house. A whole list of websites will come up with any information pertaining to the white house. This is where search engine 2.0 becomes different then the original. Search engines are the same except now they have two main features that make them special and, in my opinion also a little scary. The two upgrades are referred to as Perfect Reach and Perfect Recall. (Zimmer, 2) Perfect Reach is a search engines ability to reach all points and content of the Internet. Allowing to index millions and millions of web documents, images, audio and video files. (Zimmer, 3) Once a search has all of this information listed in its servers it helps to guarantee that you will find something on the Internet with information you are looking for. Once a search engine has its information listed it now has to get the next upgrade. Perfect Recall is the ability of the search engine to understand the user based on previous searches. It takes this information about you and applies it to your searches giving you the best chance of finding exactly what you are looking for. (Zimmer, 3) Basically, if you are looking for the white house but, have shown no interest in the one in D.C. it will look back at your search history see that you have been looking for houses in your area and come up with a site with white houses in that area for sale.

 

            That is basically how search engine 2.0 works. The problem I have with it is the fact it has the ability to gain your personal information and keep it for a long time. (Zimmer, 5) This is what scared me about this article although it makes your searches easier it gives the ability for anyone to find out anything about you.  Hopefully, one day there will be regulation on this front because the reality of your identity being stolen is very real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citation:

 

Zimmer, Michael. (2008). The externalities of search 2.0: The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets web 2.0.  First Monday, 13. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2136/1944

Web 2.0 a user world

Today I read What is web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software by Tim O’Reilly. As you can guess the subject of the paper is about web 2.0. The story concentrates on the differences between web 1.0 and web 2.0.  Before I read the story I was not really sure what the difference between the two would be. I actually figured the Internet was just updated and not that there was a whole new one being used. That is why I am still a student because I still have things to learn.

 

           

            In 2001 when the .com bubble finally burst it was taken as a sign that the Internet needed an update and that the collapse was unavoidable (O’Reilly, 2005). In response to the collapse a conference was organized to help lay down the ideas of web 2.0.  The result of the conference basically, turned into what the Internet is today. Instead of using software with licensing agreements and scheduled updates you would use a browser, which had applications on it (O’Reilly, 2005).  To put it simply, you would be using Internet explorer, safari and firefox instead of purchasing an Internet software program. The pioneers of web 2.0 thought the Internet should be an included service and not a separate purchase (O’Reilly, 2005).

 

            One of the biggest changes I found to be was the fact that the Internet is now user oriented.  Something like Wikipedia would not exist if it were not for the users who were consistently updating it. In order for an application to be successful on the Internet now it needs to be user oriented and, not control the platform and lock itself (O’Reilly, 2005).  This point of a user oriented Internet I think speaks best with the explosion of blogging. People can now create their own websites with whatever they want on it and other people will view it. We are at a point now that the more data the Internet has the stronger it becomes. Sites like mapquest, ebay, flickr and amazon all rely on data and without it they are nothing (O’Reilly, 2005).

 

            Internet application companies rely on the users to make their sites better. This is the concept of web 2.0 a user oriented universe that grows stronger in numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

Citation:

 

O’Reilly, time (2005). What is web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html.

 

Free Rider not a big deal

Communication media, such as Usenet, have become an excellent communication tool for people with similar interests to share information. Although the chance of free riding in spam is possible, as time goes on the chances of encounters with those problems grows thinner and thinner. Ever since the Internet was created and open discussion amongst users grew, the problem of free riders has always existed. In this essay I will discuss my observations of a Usenet group on Google groups called alt.autos.corvette as well as the problems encountered with free riders and spam.

 First, in order to understand what the main subject of this essay is about some background information is needed. Usenet is a type of communication medium. As defined by Webster, Usenet is “an association of computer programmers using the operating system Unix”(Webster.com). To put it into simpler terms, Usenet is a place online where people can go in order to post and reply to messages publicly on topics of similar interest (Wiki.org). In my observations I followed a Usenet group based on Corvettes. The group is called alt.auto.corvette. In this group anyone can join into it and post a thread on an opinion they have or ask a question to some of the hardcore vette junkies. There are all kinds of people in these groups from all parts of the country. There are young people like me just looking for advice and there are older people who are there to give answers when needed. For instance, during my observations I opened a post asking for advice from the group about getting a 67’ stingray project car. The replies I received were genuine in opinion and financially and physically realistic for me. I was basically told to wait until I was older and after I had owned a couple before I tried to re-vamp a classic that is generally expensive to find and fix. While searching through the other post I realized this place was more than merely a group for Q & A. It was a community because although you might not see everyone in person, you feel as though you have friends. There are people asking how projects are going, how a car show was, and saying things like “did you see the deal on that ’77?. It was very cool to see that there are places online that can be fairly personal even though you are discussing things with people you have never met before.  Despite this, unfortunately there is always that possibility of those encounters we all dread and hate to see online. Of course I am talking of the dreaded spammer or free rider.

 A free rider is a person who receives “a benefit obtained at another's expense or without the usual cost or effort”(Webster.com). This is very similar to doing a group project with one person doing none of the work but takes advantage of the work done to get the grade and/or exposure that he/she is looking for. Spammers and free riders are very similar to the slackers of group projects. Throughout my observations, despite my positive findings I was also on the look out for enemies trying to enter into my newly found community. Up until the last day I had seen no such intruders, but a good defenseman never lets his guard down. Alas!!!! On the last day I found an attempted attack: Asian women webcams here for you. Quick to investigate, I clicked the thread and to no surprise my fellow community members had already gone on the attack. Ranting and raving ensued but then something else happened. Upon replying to the intruders attack, a member accidentally kept the original thread in the message causing a “Salem witch-hunt” happening amongst the members. A group banded together against the person who was only trying to protect the group but at the same time spreading the intruder’s message thus accomplishing the mission of the intruder. Although a few scrutinized the initial defender it was quick to disintegrate and within five minutes it was all forgotten. The point of all this is that no matter if there are 100 or 100,000 posts, free riders are spotted and handled immediately and the best thing to do is just ignore them (Kollcock, 1996, 118). You ignore them because, as I saw, the only thing recognition does is expose the problem more which gives them the exact recognition that they desire.

 I learned a great deal throughout my observations and developing this particular essay. I never saw myself joining one of these groups but now that I am a part of it I do not see myself leaving. As for the free rider issue, as technology advances I feel that security measures to detract these things from happening will advance as well.  Only time will tell whether or not free riders will still be around in the future.

 

 Citation:

 

Free Riding:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free%20rider

 

Kollock, Peter & Smith, Marc. (1996). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities. In Susan C, Herring (ED.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp.109-128. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

 

Usenet:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Usenet

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet