Archive for Uncategorized

Paul Boutin’s “So you want to be a Blogging Star”

Thousands read Mr. Cuban’s posts every single day. You can easily place automatically served ad banners from Google or AdBrite onto your blog. “In 3.5 months we made $9.47,” complained one blogger, Ted Dziuba, who yanked the automatic ads off of his site, Uncov.com.
Mr. Dziuba, a software engineer at Persai, a Web news filtering service, began blogging out of sheer frustration with buggy, overhyped Web 2.0 applications. Mr. Cuban said: “Blog about your passions. Just post it already! Boing Boing’s bloggers are known for going back to posts to update them, adding new information and striking out factual errors.
Bloggers disagree on how often they should post. Mr. Reynolds and Ms. Jardin post several times a day. Likewise, there’s no one right length for blog posts, but the most successful sites seem to have their own reliable formats, just like most professional publications. Links from other bloggers increase your readership two ways: they send readers directly from other sites, and they raise your ranking in search engine results. A blogger who posts about a hot topic like Eliot Spitzer’s secret life, but has no inbound links, will lose out to one who already has dozens of inbound links from other sites.
Some bloggers place links to their sites in comments they write on more established blogs. A more direct way to draw a crowd is to submit your blog posts to news aggregation sites like Digg, Fark and Boing Boing. Readers vote on how much they like the posts and new readers are drawn to the list of most popular posts. Allowing readers to post comments on your blog not only increases readership, it provides a sense of live interaction with the rest of the world. It’s that if you blog regularly for long enough, and begin to get comments and links from other bloggers, you’ll have trouble doing your day job.

Question 1: Why do you think people blog to strangers?

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Timeline of the Internet

Isn’t it amazing how far we have come with computers. I remember learning MS DOS 30 years ago in school. Today I cannot imagine my life without my laptop. I can only imagine what changes will be made in the coming years.

Question 1. Where and what would you like to see with computers ten years from now?

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Metaforas: Dialogue

In this day and age can you imagine not owning a cell phone or having internet access. Even though I was joking before I took this class that I was digitally illiterate because this class was so out of my comfort zone. I never imagined that I would have a blog page or even sign up for a Facebook account.
When we email or hold a video conference we are using some form of dialogue. Dialogue is a form of communication that we do every day.

Question 1: Has computers changed the way we interact with one another? Do you think this has a positive or negative effect on society?

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Metaforas Thinking Through Technology by Charles H. Traub and Jonathan Lipkin

We have borrowed the term “World Brain” from H. G. Wells (British science fiction writer, 1866-1946), who, in 1937, wrote an essay by that title. The Web is an incarnation of what he called the “Permanent World Encyclopedia,” thanks to the visionary work of people from Vannevar Bush (American engineer and science administrator, 1890-1974) to Tim Berners-Lee (British inventor of the World Wide Web, born 1955) who were building on an intellectual foundation laid by those such as Babbage (English mathematician and philosopher, 1791-1871), Lovelace (English program creator, 1815-52), and the African griot. Jorge Luis Borges’(Argentine writer, 1899-1986) 1941 story The Library of Babel describes a nearly infinite library, filled with books composed of every possible combination of words and letters. The protagonist spends his days wandering the library searching for the one true catalog to the library. Search engines themselves are part of the search for meaning.

The World Brain is culture, and what we collect feeds that brain. Collection is part of the human urge to create. Traditional collections, from works of art to Barbie dolls are of course collections of physical objects. The “World Brain” is a living organism of connected synapses, provided by creative interlocutors, which can grow in rhizomatic ways. As Kevin Kelly (American publisher and editor, born 1952) writes, we are training the Web. Michael Wesch (American anthropologist and digital enthnographer) notes: “the Web is us/ing us.”

Question 1: How has the internet affected our daily lives?

Question 2: What are the advantages and disadvantages of the computer?

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MetaforasThinking Through Technology

The realm of the circuit is formed by digital networks, the electronic digital tools we use, and the people who are connected by it. The realm is composed of interlocking networks of human exchange. A network is defined as the linkage of nodes (components) into a system, or a web of connections. Networks of communication draw connections between people, whereas networks of pathways and roads link villages and cities. The earliest networks were the routes used to travel from shelter to food. As people met at the watering hole, the exchange of goods gave way to the exchange of information. Networks are not always creative, they can be destructive as well. Furthermore, networks connect and enhance one another.
Understanding the network of the human mind is one of our greatest quests. As the neural networks of the brain are stimulated by input neurons, they produce a set of outputs depending on the configuration of the network. The redundancy of the neural network allows the brain to function even after parts of it have become damaged. Recently, computer scientists have adapted the model of the neural network to design computers themselves. Modern computing systems model neural networks and are used to recognize fingerprints or to predict weather. Even though these computers cannot replicate the complexity of the human brain, they can vastly outperform the previous generation of computers. Networks, those of both communication and distribution, changed relatively little from their earliest incarnations until recent times. Early networks used human and/or animal power (with the notable exception of wind-powered ships) to transport goods or information (in the form of either written messages or those stored in memory). The electrification of networks of communication in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (from the telegraph to the telephone to the home Internet connection) continues the history of the realm of the circuit. Additionally, a shocking number of people lack access to networks that provide clean drinking water. Electrified networks produce rapid and sometimes radical social changes. The telephone call allows peoples to project themselves instantly across previously inconceivable distances, a phenomenon known today as telepresence. The cell phone has increased the user’s mobility and has become an accessory as common as the wristwatch, allowing us to connect to the electronic network while we continue to negotiate the familiar physical networks of our lives.

Social Structures

The circuit is home to people and hardware, and networks have value as they reinforce existing social networks, at the same time as they create new networks. Social networking Websites like Flickr, Facebook and MySpace allow participants to connect with friends they already have, while forging new possibilities.
Discontent with the dominance of a particular political, social, or economic system has often produced new inventions and new networks. Networks often serve to destabilize authority and the established order, usually through the dissemination of information critical of the dominant culture or the previous network.

Question 1. What is your thoughts on that half of the world’s population don’t have a telephone, and 35 percent don’t have access to a network of electrical power additionally a large number of people don’t have access to networks that provide clean drinking water?

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Here I Am Taking My Own Picture

Self portraits is a form of self expression. As the author shows us many people engaged in this activity in front of mirror years ago. In our new world of digital technology is it wrong to be updating numerous poses over the internet?

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Friend Game

Cyber bullying concerns me a lot.  I have seen many documentaries about children committing suicide and the bullies not being held responsible for it.  Do you think that cyber bullies should be held accountable for their actions?

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Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Do you agree with the military ban on MySpace and not Facebook?  Is the military trying to divide the classes even further or afraid that the soldiers will create a negative impression on the war?

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Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?

Even though change can be good in most situations.  Do you think parents need to become more pro active in their teenagers lives and become more educated on the ever changing world of cyber space to keep them safe from predators?

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