Facebook

In the March 2010 issue of the magazine Fast Company, there was an interesting article on the social networking site Facebook. Facebook was co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg (who is the face of the company), Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes out of a Harvard dorm room.

From these humble beginnings, Facebook has developed into the behemoth that it is today. Facebook currently has over 350 million users (according to Wikipedia), with hopes of surpassing Google's 800 million users in the future.

How do they do it? Facebook finds employees who are driven by their love of innovative technology and they encourage interaction amongst their employees. They also put each employee through a six week "boot camp" upon hiring to teach them the ropes of the various parts that make up Facebook, and require all (generally) employees to attend an all night meeting about every other month. This allows employees to feel free to throw ideas on the table, interact with coworkers, and helps each employee realize and understand how hard their coworkers work to bring ideas to fruition. Also, Facebook staff are required to work on every part of the site at one time or another so that they become familiar with different areas of coding, and how it all ties together.

What are some of the potential problems associated with Facebook use? There is the obvious one - content that you post on Facebook can be seen by potential employers who may decide not to hire you because of views expressed in your posts, or pictures that you upload to your profile. So beware of what you put on Facebook! There are also issues such as the recent malware problem that some users of the application "Farm Town" experienced. According to an April 12, 2010 article in PC World, a Shockwave Flash advertisement has been redirecting users to a site that sells fake antivirus software. Then today, ironically enough, I personally had an issue with Facebook. I received a request from a friend to go to an application that claimed to have riddles. So, trusting my friend and being curious, I clicked the "accept" button, and it immediately sent the same request to all of my Facebook friends without my permission. Then, it took me through a series of never ending advertisements, never providing an answer to the opening riddle. Here's hoping that it was simply annoying and not dangerous to my computer, or the computers of any of my friends (I did post a warning, so hopefully they will catch that before being dragged into the same farce as I was!).

Despite these issues, I will still continue to use Facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with several friends that I had lost touch with, and even with a cousin who put me in touch with my biological father who I had lost touch with 20 years ago. I will simply try to use caution and common sense when utilizing the site.

Media Distribution

There is a convergence point that we are ever-so-slowly approaching in the realm of media. This point seems close at hand yet fully out of reach. The global network of wireless connectivity is going to make this point attainable, hopefully in the near future. My dream of full media distribution convergence is one where all of my media is available to me on any device, anywhere.

There seems to be two major barriers to the realization of this convergence. The first and most frustrating is the content providers. In their greedy attempt to extract every single penny out of every piece of media they own (which these days is just about everything), they have been reluctant to adopt new methods of content delivery. The only company I can see that really seems to be progressive on this issue is Netflix. They are currently working on a streaming application for Android phones and I believe there is already one for the iPad/iPhone.

The second barrier is bandwidth. Streaming of music, not to mention video, requires significant bandwidth capabilities, at least to provide a reasonable level of quality. These capabilities are literally on the verge of being available, at least in major metropolitan regions. But it appears that providers have been a bit slow in rolling out some of the next-gen cellular networks, and so progress toward this convergence point has been slow. It now appears that significantly faster 3G and 4G networks are poised to roll out to significant swaths of the US population.

All I really want is a service where I can upload the content I own to a provider's server and be able to stream that content anywhere I am, on any network, and to any device. I don't want to have to worry about lugging an iPod, and a laptop, or a hard drive around with me to access my media. I want to be able to have a wireless connection in my car that allows me access to my home-based media and stream anything from my collection. I want to be able to stream movies that I own to my phone.

Right now, the best workaround (although still flawed) I've found is Orb. You can read more about it on their website, but basically, you download their software which turns your home computer into a server. You tell it what folders you want to have available on the server, and then you can access any of the files within those folders from any device that is connected to the internet, and its free. You can access music, video, and files of any type. It sounds great, and it really is, but its still not at a level of quality or reliability that results in an experience that will have you leaving your iPod at home.

Communication/3rd blog

Sorry that I got a little behinde, this is my 3rd blog now.





The most interesting thing to me in almost every class that I take is the communication area of study. So when we covered society, communication fell within it. A society consists of a large number of people who live in the same country and who deal with one another. Languages main goal is communication.



Communication has a few main components that build it up. It's a medium or a channel. There are many forms of communication. It can be written, in many forms like an essay, texting, e-mails, or just notes on paper. Auditory, which means of or relating to the process of hearing, is the second form. This is anything that is verbal or aloud. The third form is visual, anything you can see. this would include sign language, reading lips, and any of that. The purpose of communication is to have a message to get across to other people or an individual.

The most common way of communication is kind of new, for about 5 years or less. This would be social networking online. There are many websites for this such as: www.facebook.com , www.myspace.com , www.myyearbook.com , www.twitter.com and www.mocospace.com. These sites are highly populated with people from all over the world. Since texting has become so popular these websites have even made applications for all cell phones so that you can just click on it and go directly to your page and send messages and add people on the website. This can be unsafe if you don't be careful of who you talk to or if you don't block your profile and make it private.