New Media Article

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/how-to-treat-facebook-and-twitter-like-your-kids/48027?tag=content;search-results-rivers In this article writer Jason Hiner makes an analogy between social media and parental favoritism amongst siblings. I thought this was an interesting article because it is explaining his reasons for deactivating the cross-posting that Twitter and Facebook allow. Many of you are probably aware at this point that a person can connect the two sites so that one is producing a live feed onto the other. I think that this convergence of all social media being used may work for some people who are trying to get out a certain amount of information at a faster speed. An example of this is someone who has a certain audience following them on Twitter, meanwhile they keep their Facebook for close friends and family. There still may be information that they want both audiences to know about. The problem of not wanting specific information transferring from one network to the other could possibly be solved with an option for each post on whether the person wants it to show up on more than one site. I don't have a Twitter account so this may already be possible. I thought it was also interesting that this article mentions to keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of the social networks you are using in effort to use them in a way that works best for you. At the moment I only have a Facebook account, but I have often that for businesses and entrepreneurs Twitter would be a great way to get a lot of information out several times as opposed to Facebook which I see more for personal use.

World Wide Web

So there was a lot of technical information to this article about the World Wide Web and it's origins and I have to admit it gave me a headache because I forgot to print it out from work this week so I had to read it from the computer, but it was still INTERESTING to me. This was in 1994 yet it is still is how we know the technical side of the Internet to be today. In regard to HTTP and URLs I was familiar with them but not in terms of hypertext transfer protocol or the way servers work. It was also interesting reading about MIME as well as how HTML become the common language for the interchange of hypertext. This article was interesting to read now because it was meant to help people understand w3. It seems that many of goals that were defined at that time have been met through the development that followed. In terms of my own experience with this article is that the Internet has evolved and met several goals that were first set for it, meanwhile the many users still have no idea what they are using. I have to admit that I am not very educated in this field of knowledge so I enjoyed reading this article.

A Virtual Death-Jordan

"One of the most touted beliefs about Internet communication is that the medium
strips away users' offline identities and leaves them free to reconstruct a tetherless online persona" (Jordan,2005). I really enjoyed reading this article, and this statement in particular stood out to me because this ties in with what we have been studying all semester. In the article Jordan discusses a particular case of an online hoax involving a woman who was blogging as a 19 year old girl who was dying of leukemia. When the community discovered that Kaycee did not really exist and that the woman who was blogging they were upset and released a lot of statements from all over the world in regard to how they felt. This article brought up some very interesting points about the Internet serving as medium that allows people to deceive others based on the ability to hide certain information as well as portray themselves in a certain light. As we have learned throughout this semester many people are comfortable using the Internet to paint a picture of themselves ( not just literally, but in terms of how they want others to see them based on the pictures, videos, text, etc that they choose to put on their online social networks, blog cites, etc.) The story of Kaycee was not surprising to me because as the article often brings up, people have already been doing this type of deception for as long as we can recall and the Internet is now just another form of media that someone can use in this way. I liked how the article brought up the point that specific images (example "the bodybuilder") cannot conclude what a person is or is not (Jordan, 2005). We see this often with the Internet because there is an uncertainty on what we are looking at and our imagination is left to decide. I have questioned the authenticity of pictures of people before and whether or not they were really the person who was writing something on the Internet, but that is not to say I was right or wrong on whether or not the picture was really the person. The whole point is how would I really know? There is truly no way to know for sure unless I know the person in face-to-face contact. This is why I agree with the article that we should stay skeptical to a certain degree because if not we would likely be suckered in to everything we read online. It is unfortunate that other people who are staying truthful online had to receive backlash from the Debbie Swenson incident, but the truth is we don't know that these people are being authentic either. I think we can only trust and distrust as we have reason to and as we come across each new experience.

Smartphones

Article Link

Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy

It was interesting to learn in this study that over half of the participants (62.6%) were blogging for social interaction. There were several great points brought up in this article in relation to privacy and expression. We read about the different types of privacy as well as how social construction plays in on how we feel comfortable expressing ourselves or disclosing personal information. There was the example of how if we didn't have these types of privacy that our relationships wouldn't differ between those with our mothers and those with our employers. I think that it's hard to make that assumption simply because there are still aspects of affection and nurture that we get out of our family members that we don't have with others due to how much time we spend with them, but I can understand what this means in relation to privacy. Basically privacy is what plays a huge role in our everyday lives. We do and don't do many of our actions because of privacy. Expressive privacy was found to be crucial in the way that bloggers value their privacy. In my personal life I have never felt comfortable creating a blog or uploading videos of myself onto any web forums, but I have made an interesting connection between this article and my personal life. When I had to create a blog for this course I felt comfortable doing so because I knew my audience would be classmates and my professor. I have become used to uploading videos of myself for educational purposes, but I know that I would not be comfortable putting these videos onto YouTube or a similar Internet site.

The End of Books Article

I thought this was a very insightful article that is highlighting where hypertext started, and also potentially where it is headed in the future. Like most of the articles I found some very surprising information such as hypertext fiction being published on disks as far back as 1991. When I think of online print now I tend to focus on the last ten years being a prominent source for hypertext taking off. Although I see book stores such as Barnes and Nobles still around there are still other companies that are going under like Borders books, and I often wonder what the future of books will be like. Especially now with technology like the kindle and even just our basic computers enable us to read books online. I know many people who still prefer to read their books in physical book form, but that doesn't mean that we won't see an end of books here in our lifetime. Much like people who were not so eager to switch over from cassette players to CD players eventually had no choice in the matter because technology moves forward whether or not we are displeased. When the technology of watching movies on the computer or streaming them with an HDMI cable to our televisions we slowly saw Hollywood Videos and many Blockbuster videos shutting down because there was not as high of a demand for a DVD to watch a movie. I thought that it was very interesting what the article mentioned in regard to hypertext using different font types to identify voice and plot elements. The way we used to know books is one type of font throughout the whole book that we do not often associate with what we are reading, meaning our minds interpret what is happening in the story based on the words, rather than how the text is displayed. With hypertext there is the ability to shift to several different fonts and even font sizes to place emphasis on specific parts of the content. Personally the thought of this is not appealing and I would prefer to read a simple text that stays the same, but I have no idea what I will be saying about this ten years from this point. I have always been a little bit slower than the average person in regard to technology. I never even understood how people preferred to listening to books on tape as opposed to reading them because I occasionally found myself annoyed by the person reading the book, and was unable to focus on the content. I think I might have a similar experience if I were to read a book through hyperspace and the font were to be constantly changing as if it was forcing me to accept specific content as being more important, serious, etc. than other parts of the book.

Grooveshark

http://sfappeal.com/culture/2011/04/big-fish-big-pond-grooveshark-app-no-longer-in-android-app-store.php