A smaller world: convenient or risky?

In the past few years, there's a popular saying among youngsters: " Except 'know' and 'don't know', people have another relationship, which is "I'm a friend on his/her Facebook/Twitter/Blog..." It is the social media that makes our world much smaller than ever.
MicroBlog--a popular social network website in China is famous for the "popularity users" who may be a pop star（Tom Cruise）, a political critic, a BTO arena(Christine Lagarde), etc. Every one can have a chance make close contact with those celebrities during the "Micro Interview" time, when the celebrities are required to answer people's questions during a period of time. This can be an advantage for the "popularity users" to gain popularity and know what the fans focus on most. And the fans are satisfied to talk to someone who they're really admire but have no chance to meet with. As we can see, the social media does bring us a great convenient of sharing information and contacting with people around the world.
However, the impact of MicroBlog can also be negative. Because of the relatively freedom of speech on the social network, it is hard to control what people are saying. And the private of the people related to the comments is hard to be protected.Sometimes we find people have no secret at all when they are exposed in the social media.
How to balance the convenient information exchange and the privacy? Maybe all of us have to find a best way before enjoying the "small world".

You thought of all the Negatives but what about the Positive?

Technology has blossomed over the years. It has become the "new age" and without adaptation you can get lost. The use of social media is one of the biggest ways that people of all ages use, on a regular basis that has been labeled as more harmful to most than good. What do you think? The negatives about social media are always the first expressed but have you ever really thought about the positive effects that technology may have in your life as far as social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter? Here in this article The Positive Impact Of Social Networking Sites on Society by Dave Parrack enlightens us on his ideas of all the ways social media has been beneficial in our life. See what he has to say and if any of his reasons are similar to your own benefits of the social media.

College student being sued for $675k for sharing music

On Monday, the supreme court held up a $675000 fine levied on a college student for sharing music files. The student shared 30 files on a peer to peer network and this was enough to land him the punishment. Joel, the student upon whom the fines were incurred, took this case to the supreme court as he believed that the law was used in a way that congress did not intend it to be used. The main argument in defense of the defendant is that the punishment is excessive, and even the Obama administration spoke out against the fines. The appellate court had reduced Joel's fines down to $67500, or $2250 per track, but then the original fines were reinstated. Many find the jury's award "severe and oppressive", but in the end it was decided that the judge does not have the power to reduce damages. The intentions of these cases are of course to intimidate music sharers from sharing music on the internet.

Is Social Media Ruining Our Minds?

Is social media making those who use it less intelligent? Does it make us socially awkward? Does it contribute to people’s inability to focus? I’ve begun to ask myself this question and I’ve realized that I (including those around me) am actually exhibiting negative affects of social media through changes in my multitasking skills, social interactions and the ability to focus. For example, my attention span has clearly been significantly lowered throughout the years because of social media. Apparently, the average attention span ten years ago was 12 minutes, while now it averages at 5 minutes. The fact that the average attention span has been shortened is definitely possible. Many times during class or any other time students are required to focus, they find themselves drifting towards wanting to check their Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Is it because they are addicted to social media or is it because they are simply bored? Take a look at How Social Media is Ruining Our Minds and analyze the various affects. Do these negative effects of social media apply to you and your friends or are they simply false implications? 

Happiness, hard drives or high fives?

In a recent study conducted by Stanford University, tech savvy Tweenie boppers were found to be unhappy... As if their hormones weren't enough to send them for a loop, excessive use of technology fuels insecurity, and breeds unhappiness. On average, girls spent nearly seven hours interacting online compared to only two hours face-to-face with their peers.  This article on Social Well Being, states that girls are negatively affected because they aren't ascertaining the social skills needed to build a positive self image. Girls aged 8-12 need interpersonal interaction with their peers to develop social coping skills, and self esteem. Instead of spending their days tweeting about team edward, girls need sleep over  twilight marathon parties, and a good old gossip session.

Measure Your Influence Online: Whats you Klout?

Although the big players in social media are still Twitter and Facebook, there are still many other social media outlets from Google+ to foursquare. With the myriad of social networks arising people are starting to increase their networks on exponential scales. But how important are you really in the infinite expanse of the internet. You can finally measure that with Klout. It's a new service designed to compile and analyze all facets of your social media and measure your influence in each one. Klout compiles your likes and shares on facebook, your retweets on twitter, and many other aspects of social media to give you a score out of 100 measuring your internet influence. To put this score into context, Barack Obama is a 99, Kanye West a 93, and Jimmy Kimmel an 85. Social media has reached a point where we are rating how influential you have become, however the websites goal isn't simply to feel good about how important you are, but as with most things, to make money. The higher your Klout the more money certain businesses will offer you to publicize their product. Klout is a great way to see if the hours you've put into social media could now help out your wallet.

Just Stop Talking: Horrible Ways to Use Twitter

Sunday, Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith turned in one of the most courageous, gutsy performances in NFL history. No, he didn’t set any records or make any really spectacular individual plays. But what he did do was put up 127 yards and two touchdowns less than 24 hours after his younger brother passed away.

However, one sad individual thought it was a good idea to post this tweet toward Smith.

I'm a big supporter of social media, especially Twitter, but sports fans often take their freedom of speech over the line, using these sites in ultra-negative ways. Fantasy football players bash real players for getting hurt and ruining their fantasy teams.  They send death threats through Twitter when a player loses a game for their favorite team. The reality is that players are humans, and people on Twitter need to treat them as such.

Click here to read about bad uses of Twitter outside of the world of sports.

Draw Something, Play Anything!

Social media has seemed to blossom within the past 10 years becoming a powerhouse within the internet. Yet, there have been other platforms rising within them at the same time. Slowly gaining weight with every new addiction caused, gaming on social media has become a fad for every age. This is not only people simply playing games online, but using the social media as another platform to connect to others. People are joining social networks for the games and then staying for the everything else. And in other cases, they have the network and now need something do with it. This social network platform has also led to the development of much larger gaming areas or the same types being converted into apps for android and apple.

The two biggest parts of social media gaming has to be 1) the craze and then 2) the addiction. We have all heard of Farmville, and at some point graced its presence (though I am luck to not have). This online game gained notoriety when it become integrated into Facebook. From then on, it skyrocketed to success becoming one of the most played games on the web. But there was a dark side to this. Two separate instances and probably countless others that are undocumented tell of people going crazy to play Farmville. The Manchester Evening News reported a man who was so desperate for money to play Farmville that he stole a credit card from a blind man and proceeded to kill his mother's ex-lover for more money to by crack. Another incident cited was a mother who killed her 3 month old son after interrupting her Farmville game by crying. Like all other games, they lost popularity and eventually dwindled down to only some remaining users. Yet, it led to the promotion of making other social media games and apps. Another notorious one was/is DrawSomething. A social media game integrated into Facebook allowing players to challenge friends and even random opponents.

Even with all the negatives others are promoting the use of social media gaming. Some argue that it will improve the learning process and help kids understand concepts much easier (Article).
"What will the outcome of these games be in the future?"you ask. Well, who knows? With how technology is advancing these days it might not be too long until our social media sites can do more than just make the game interactive from computer to computer.

Friendster Might Need a New Name

Friendster.com is a social gaming site that was recently completely revamped from a simple social networking site. It was one of the sparks of Web 2.0, but it could not keep up with the massive social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, so it changed its strategy towards social gaming in 2011. Friendster knew that it was falling behind and realized that it needed to find a unique market in order to remain competitive. It now has over 100 million members and is recognized as the largest online gaming platform in Southeast Asia. Read more about Friendster's recent transformation here.

The Harsh Reality of Social Media

The use of social media is constantly advancing and becoming more popular every day. While there are many benefits to this online world such as the ability to connect with high school friends on Facebook, the threat of cyber bullying has come into play with this advancement. Privacy is now very difficult to maintain due to the widespread use of social media. Tyler Clementi was a student who was caught on tape having sexual relations with another man and killed himself due to humiliation.

Tyler is not the first teenager to face cyber bullying. The rising popularity of "sexting" has taken place in which one takes a nude photo of themselves and sends it through a text to another person. In one particular case, a girl named Jessica Logan sent a nude photo to her boyfriend who in turn sent the photo to other girls. Jessica began getting made fun of and was called horrible names and ended up committing suicide like Tyler. Many people do not think cyber bullying is a serious issue and participate in these acts because they think it's funny, however, suicide is far from humorous. People need to open their eyes and see the horrible effects of cyber bullying.

Click here to read the full article on Tyler or Jessica's story.

Social Networking in the Job Market: Not All Bad!

Though many people are under the impression that social networking has only had negative impacts on those seeking jobs, an article from Time Magazine entitled "How Recruiters Use Social Networks to Make Hiring Decisions Now," by Dan Schwabel, points out some of the benefits that social networks provide to both employers and potential employees.  According to the article, companies and recruiters actually prefer that a job applicant has some sort of social networking profile, not just to pick apart the undesirable aspects of the applicant but to make sure that the person seeking a job is relevant and able to adapt to modern times. Employers also like to see "affiliations with professional organizations on a candidate's profile." This way, when receiving applications, recruiters know whether or not the applicant's professionalism is reflected even in who they follow on Twitter or what they have marked as their interests on Facebook. In addition, although Facebook is generally perceived as a source of rejection for many potential employers who are not careful about what they post, "one in every four recruiters has successfully found a candidate on Facebook." The misconception that social networking is strictly detrimental to job applicants is dismantled by this article -- you just have to be mindful of how your online profiles and postings reflect your professional image.

Click here to read the full article.

FriendWho?

As a start-up social media site in 2002, Friendster.com aimed to be a social networking site for users to share photos, videos, etc. Unfortunately for Friendster, their execution was poor and with the rise of Facebook and Myspace, they lagged behind. In 2011, Friendster revamped as a social gaming site, bringing in over 115 million users. The newer social gaming site allows users to chat, interact, and keep score records. However, as of last May, the creators of Friendster cleared out the social networking aspect of the site, leaving it mostly geared toward an Asian audience with limited “friending”. Read more about Friendster's turnover from networking to gaming in this article by TechCrunch.

Negative Effects of Social Media: Cyber Bullying

                     The United States vs. Lori Drew

Social media comes in a multitude of shapes and sizes and has taken the world by storm. When used correctly, social media can produce an infinite amount of benefits. This includes establishing new relationships, reconnecting with friends and family and the freedom to express your thoughts and ideas. However, many people argue that there are more negative outcomes to social media than positives. I would have to agree with this statement. Some of the general complaints and negatives associated with social media include more time online, less face-to-face interaction, posts that could affect future jobs, false impersonation and cyber bullying.

Cyber bullying has become much more popular in recent years due to the increase in social media. Cyber bullying is defined by Webster as "the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm others." It is reported that within the past year approximately 43% of all teens within the United States have experienced some form of cyber bullying.

A severe case of cyber bullying occurred on October 17th, 2006, when Megan Meier, age 13 received a message from Josh Evans stating, “The world would be better off without you.” Megan had never physically met Josh, but she cared deeply about him. His words hurt her terribly and she was found dead twenty minutes later in her closet.  Megan had hung herself. The saddest part of the story is that Josh Evans did not exist. He was merely created by Lori Drew to pry into the life of Megan Meier and discover her feelings about her own daughter. Thankfully Drew was arrested in 2009. This just goes to show how serious cyber bullying can be.

Duck Duck Go: The Private Search Engine

Duck Duck Go is a search engine like Google and Bing (how I hate that name...), but there's something odd about it, something different. If you and a friend were to search anything (say, the Radiohead tour dates) on Google and Bing, the two of you will most likely get different results. Not too different, but certainly not the same. Even more, if you look at the URLs for the two links above, you can probably tell certain things about me. For example, the Google link shows that I use the Ubuntu operating system. They say more, but I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole.
So, why are they different? Two main reasons: tracking and filtering. Both browsers track you, and both filter results to what they think you want. You may think that you're getting unbiased results, but you're actually getting your own bias, which  limits what you're exposed to. That's not great.
The tracking might be worse. Remember how the URL has information about you in it? It has information about your browser and your computer, a lot of information. To find out exactly what information is sent, go to this link at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

So what exactly can you do about it? Duck Duck Go is a (pretty popular) search engine that doesn't track and doesn't filter. If you search for Radiohead tour dates on DDG, you can see that their link doesn't have any of that tracking information, and they don't send any additional info to websites. You can find them at DuckDuckGo.com

Related:
Oldie but Goodie
Google Stopped Sending Out Tracking Info (but not really)
Edit: Switched to the INFO 3.0 blog, not my own.

Cooking it Up With RecipeBridge

Tired of searching through multiple recipe sites for that one cheesecake recipe? Well not to worry, RecipeBridge does it all for you on one database! RecipeBridge searches over 350 recipe sites and indexes millions of recipes across the internet to help you find the perfect recipe. Founded in December 2007, RecipeBridge was the first dedicated recipe search engine founded by entrepreneurs Andy Theimer and Bill Brennan. RecipeBridge narrows down searches by either keyword, cuisine, ingredient, meal or occasion. Each link to a recipe also comes with a picture so you're sure you know what you're cooking. RecipeBridge is also opening its site to chefs, restaurants, food brands, or even food bloggers to submit their recipes so that the site can index it. RecipeBridge is growing to be one of the largest recipe search engines and is a perfect choice if you need help spicing up your menu.

http://www.recipebridge.com/

Gigablast could it be the new Google?

This new meta tag based search engine, founded in 2000, by Matt Wells, was created, according to the site “to index up to 200 Billion pages with the least amount of hardware possible.”  This search engine site, is in no way even close to comparison with Google, but it is a new look into making the internet “more green,” if that is even possible. As the twitter link said, 90% of its power usage comes from wind energy, and according to netcraft.com, it “runs on eight servers,” and their web directory features over 300,000 topics and over 4 million categorized pages. So although not as big and popular as other search engines, it definitely is growing and it most definitely is an innovator. So test Gigablast  yourself. Would you use this instead of Google?

Browse The Internet With Privacy

People are often unaware that everything they do on the Internet is being watched.  Companies such as Facebook track what a person is looking at in order to target ads towards them (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/033d0fa8-f2c8-11e1-86e0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz26sJG8rmZ).  If you do not enjoy having everything you do on the Internet tracked, you can use a site like YIPPY.  YIPPY offers secure Internet browsing.  In the site’s bio it specifically says “We also won't sell your personal information to advertisers for profit.” (http://search.yippy.com/about) More search engines and Internet browsers are moving towards the trend of keeping information private.  Many Internet browsers already or will soon have features to prevent companies from tracking you Internet usage.  (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Adding-Do-No-Track-Into-Chromes-Latest-Developer-Build-852453/)

Benefits of Bing

Bing.com users can take advantage of the organic web search as they browse for information on anything from their favorite sports team’s current score to the dictionary definition of a word to an image search with adjustable settings. Unique features of bing.com include the changing daily background image, the dozens of languages in which the search engine can display information, and Bing’s ability to integrate results with Hotmail and Facebook. Like Google, Bing doesn’t only provide services through its web pages. Services such as maps, recipes, advertising through BingAds, and Bing News add to the search engine’s popularity. Although not as widely accepted as Google, Bing has attributes that may gain favor as people learn about benefits such as Bing Rewards. This system gives credits to regular users of Bing searches and these credits can be exchanged for various products or gift cards. http://www.discoverbing.co.uk/

MPEG-21: Bringing Transparency to Multimedia

In a society of information overload, in which use of digital multimedia is rapidly expanding, the Moving Picture Experts Group, MPEG, plans to solidify and redefine the use of digital items with the new MPEG-21 format. 

The goal of MPEG-21 is to create a single framework that will synthesize the delivery and consumption of multimedia under one roof, ensuring clear and efficient use of different forms of digital media among users through the wide array of devices available today.

For example, through the implementation MPEG-21, the use of distinct terms to describe media such as video, image, audio content, etc., will become irrelevant. Instead, all media assets will be referred to as "resources," and all those who distribute and consume these resources are "users."

MPEG-21 will also drastically change the world of P2P media sharing by creating a code that will detect which users have the right to access and or alter the resource or digital item. For more detailed information on this new format that is changing digital technology as we know it, visit http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-21/mpeg-21.htm

Sources: http://mpeg-21.itec.uni-klu.ac.at/cocoon/mpeg21/, http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-21/mpeg-21.htm, http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/technologies/mpeg-21/mp21-ff/index.htm, http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJHIT/vol1_no4_2008/5.pdf