Lets Tweet

For my post this week, I decided to look into twitter and what its all about. Twitter is defined to be “a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter) So basically you can think of it as the status updates on Facebook but delivered to your phone. Or even just a test message that is sent to multiple users. Twitter has approximately 4-5 million users. Its apparently the 3rd most popular social networking site behind Facebook and MySpace. At first, I was not sure why one would want to have such an account. Yes, I agree that status updates are interesting at times but having it sent to my phone would be much. But with some more reading, I learned that this technology can be quite useful.

This technology is used in many different scenarios. For example, during the infamous California wildfires, firefighters would use twitter to send users updates about the fire. Twitter was even more effective in spreading information and updates to students during the Virginia Tech shootings than traditional media. In this scenario specifically, I can see how useful and effective this technology is. I remember watching the updates on TV on that horrific day. I cant even imagine how frustrated family and friends were not knowing how their loved ones were and what we going on. Another area that twitter could offer its support are updates for students at colleges and universities. For example, when there are closings dues to in-climate weather, colleges could just tweet students. I know some college are adopting this, I think more should.

There are other similar services out there such as Jaiku that is offered in other countries and offer additional services such as lifestreaming. Lifestreaming is defined as an online record of a person's daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person's online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos. Twitter seems to be losing ground nationally. For instance, in China, the Chinese version has outdone twitter with many enhancements. Twitter seems to be doing well within the US but needs to move quicker and make more enhance to attract international users.

Hi-tech Hits Health Care

Coming from a family inherent to certain health conditions, I know it can be hard to offer support at times. I have seen loved ones suffer with symptoms and realize that at times, they just need to talk about what they are going through. Web 2.0 technologies are now becoming more and more engaged in the Health Care Industry. With such new technologies, patients now have more options in trying to deal with conditions. Sites like PatientsLikeMe.com offer options for patients to log on and connect with people who also may be going through or have gone through their certain medical condition. I think this is brilliant. I truly believe that mental support is irreplaceable when people encounter certain conditions like cancer, sepsis, etc. These conditions are life altering and the limited interaction with doctors sometimes is not enough. The site has various communities set-up around certain medical conditions. A patient can join a community just for social interaction, ask questions such as medical side effects, get opinions on health care facilities, or compare treatment options.

Sites like these are getting a lot of pushback from doctors. Doctors don’t believe patients should be sharing medical information. Some doctors even say its illegal...which I find ridiculous. Doctors are great and all but sometimes what they can offer may not be the entire picture. Additionally, it’s not like the doctor will sit and talk with you while you go through the serious side effects of receiving chemo. Sometimes it’s hard enough to get them on the phone to ask a question. Being able to log on and ask another cancer patient what treatment they are on and what they did to ease certain symptoms can be not only good know but comforting as the patient feels like they are not the only one going through this.

Another web 2.0 enabled site available to patients is HealthVault. This site allows users to store their health records online. So no you can get rid of those dusty files and go hi-tech. People can even sync their personal accounts to medical devices so data is entered automatically. For example, if you have one of those pedometers (devices that measure the distance you walk/run), you can log on and just plug in your device and the information is uploaded to your account. So this data along with meal information is used to help you stay healthy or lose a few pounds if need be. This site makes it easier for users to manage their personal info and make better decisions.

What is all of the hype about? If any....

I recently joined second life...man was that a mistake but its required so oh well. I have logged on a few times now and each time I am pushing myself to stay on. Here are some reasons why.

Downloading this took forever. This time intensive process was just annoying. Sorry…I don’t have much patience if you can tell. I am the person when doing searches, keeps hitting the refresh button thinking it will speed things up when I know it won’t.

The application is memory intensive...so it takes forever for buildings/objects to load. I could be walking to what looks like open ground and then boom, a building appears. I am sure I look like an idiot to other people on second life. My system has crashed three times so far and I am sure its not the end of it. Also, my avatar randomly starts slapping her upper back...I am not even touching the keyboard...I swear!!

No matter how hard I try, I keep ending up at adult sites. I have even been chased by hookers. Not sure why?? The last one was the only one that was someone normal. But even then, people were just standing around..not really chatting. I have tried to talk to some people and the responses ranges from silence to some actual normal conversations. Quite honestly though, I have no interest in talking to random strangers. I have enough going on in my real life and making small talk with some random avatar falls real far down my list. I have noticed though that if you are "away" from you computer, you avatars goes into away mode...but he/she basically looks like they are sleeping with their heads facing towards the ground. Looks kind of funny...see if you can find one.

I had heard that second life had some good places to go to try new view products. Not sure how that would work. Are there clothes you try on your avatar? Even if my avatar looks good with it, I doubt I would buy it. I also did a search on places to go such as art museums, school, and other “PG” related sites but there was not much going on. Kind of boring.

So my question is, who are these people that are logging on and spending hours everyday? And why? Just trying to figure out all of the hype around second life.

The education of tomorrow...

With the advance of today’s technologies, our students of tomorrow need to be on the ball with these innovative technologies and work them from early childhood.I personally think the educational curriculum needs to be changed to more intensively include new technologies and their applications. I know, some may not agree that steering young children to technology will develop a bias toward those types of jobs but the truth is that this is where the future is going. Additionally, as you will see below, a number of web 2.0 tools can be used to further a child’s interest in things like art and literature. As Prof. Bliss proved to us in our first session, our nation’s kids are falling way behind children of the world. This coupled with other factors such as our nations current economic status further magnifies the problem of being misguided for so long. Introducing our children to things like web 2.0 early on can better prepare them for tomorrow’s workforce. Education is the place to start.

I recently read a blog that rates a number of web 2.0 applications for educational purposes. Below are some apps I found interesting. (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/11/the-best-web-20-applications-for-education-2008/)

Criteria set upon each tool were the following:
-Accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users. - Not like second life where I keep hitting myself over the head.
- Free-of-charge.- Appropriate for classroom use. - Not like 2nd life that has a lot, a lot of adult content.
- Completely browser-based with no download required. - Not like second life..which is so very very very taxing on your computer.

Work on your presentation skills on: Number twenty-eight is Selfcast. It lets anyone with a webcam immediately broadcast over the web for free, and anyone (without registering) can watch and also participate via live text chat.

Build artistic skills: Number twenty-seven is The Broth. It lets you create password-protected private “rooms” where people can cooperate on creating a piece of art.

Conducting Polls: Number twenty-four is Fo.reca.st. It’s a free online polling application that lets you easily add sound, images, or video to your polls/surveys; has a variety of ways to see your results; and many different formats to show your survey.

Comic skills: Number twenty-one is an online comic-creation site called Pixton. Allows users to put self-made comic strips in a virtual book. Only appropriate content is allowed on site…so its kid friendly.

Online Scavanger Hunt: Number eighteen is Zunal. An easy and fun way to do scavenger hunts on the web.

Instructional Stuffff - Number fifteen is Graspr a site where users can upload (and watch) “how-to” or “instructional” videos. Online test: Number six is My Studiyo. An innovative way to create online tests and quizzes.

Web 2.0....is it the same as electricity?

Electricity is something people rarely think about. They just plug in their devices and off they go. Very rarely do you see anyone trying to figure out the power grid and all of its intricacies. Recently, some discussion has surfaced as to whether the evolution of web 2.0 technologies has caused less of a need of network engineering. At first, I thought this was ridiculous but at second glance....I don’t know... I am on the fence. Network engineering deals with things such as Network Latency, Bandwidth issues, Routing protocols, network layouts, etc. From what I can remember from my networking class in college, we were taught that network architectures play an important role in delivery of service on a given network. There are many network topologies to consider, hardware pieces to buy, etc. A well planned and detailed architecture would be the foundation of a low-latency, low error network. At the same time, applications (and services) existed within internal networks and the idea of leveraging a service from various outside networks was not really on the rise. Thus the thought of a lessened need of Network engineers first seems preposterous to me. But now...given that may web 2.0 app reside on distributed networks and not within company walls, some of the things that were issues before may no longer be much of a concern. Additionally, computing power of servers and such has grown exponentially and some would even say its hard to reach high levels of utility. So now that servers can do so much more with less and more and more applications may be housed outside of a companies boundaries....it leads me to believe that maybe..just maybe that job of a network engineering may be a little easier..even if its just by a small amount.

Another aspect to consider though is the amount of data these Web 2.0 companies are processing. The data rates I am assuming are high and most likely will continue to rise exponentially as more and more people joins the web 2.0 revolution. I guess, if I had to choose a side, I would say that overall, the job of a network engineers is getting more and more complex. Years ago, network engineers dealt with a limited number of servers that made up a confined network. Now, things are very different and there is more to understand and comprehend.

Below is an article that discusses just this issue. (http://gigaom.com/2007/04/10/web-20-death-of-the-network-engineer)

Privacy and Web 2.0

To start off a discussion on privacy, I first decided to define what it actually is. Below is what I found compliments of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy) "Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively."Personal information includes but is not limited to: Name, Sex, Address, Political Beliefs, Religious Beliefs, Medical History, Income, ID numbers, etc.

Now with this understanding, privacy is a big concern for some while not so much for others when it comes to Web 2.0 technologies. Differences can be due to things like generational gaps, personality traits, past experiences, etc. It’s been my observation that younger generations are much more liberal with there personal information while older generations tend to tightly hold their information and are hesitant in providing it. Additionally, there are individuals who are in the middle, myself, for instance. I post personal pictures; post employment related items, and sometimes even will comment on religious issues but providing things like my home address makes me nervous. ID theft in today’s world is a very big concern and I feel like the more you provide about yourself, the more information someone has to put together a faulty ID and boom....you are left with a mess you have to clean up.

Recently I heard of cases in the real estate industry where people were providing virtual house tours online. The next thing you see are an increase in burglaries in these homes where the thieves seemed to know all of the ins and out of the home. Now that’s scary. Even on Facebook recently, someone’s account was hijacked and the imposter changed his status message to say: "BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!" This victims’ friends ended up getting scammed and lost a good deal of money. (http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/post-1.html#%20posts) The ability of web 2.0 technologies to collect personal information is a huge concern. Users usually don’t know what is being collected, what it is being used for, can access their own information, and don’t know how their information is being protected if at all.

The following article discusses what is termed the ""Four principles of the Privacy Manifesto" and I think it is worth a mention. (http://gigaom.com/2008/01/08/a-privacy-manifesto-for-the-web-20-era/)
1. Every customer has the right to know what private information is being collected.
2. Every customer has the right to know the purpose for which the data is being collected, in advance.
3. Each customer owns his or her personal information.
4. Customers have a right to expect that those collecting their personal information will store it securely.

I think this is a pretty good start where users can actually start protecting themselves.