Go Tweet Yourself

Go Tweet Yourself: 365 Reasons Why Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Other Social Networking Sites Suck, written by Janelle Randazza, is a humorous book about social networking and how social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace have become an online trend. This book literally gives you 365 reasons why these social networking sites suck and how they changed the users into "monsters." The book heavily empathizes how the users of these sites become too indulged and start to live in the virtual reality rather than living life like a normal human being. An example from the book would be how there is now a virtual golfing game on Facebook; as if golf was a sport that made you sweat, now you can play it sitting on your ass the whole time.

Randazza makes very good (although harsh at times) points on how these social networking sites change us in a bad way. I thought it was funny because I agreed with more than half of the things she points out, although I'm a user of Facebook and Myspace. I wouldn't recommend this book to people who take the internet seriously. Most people who find this book funny would probably be laughing at themselves.

Erik Hanberg

So our class had a guest speaker named Erik Hanberg on 11/24. He owns a business called Mary Holste Design and runs a fund-raising website called The Little Book of Gold. He has written 9 novels but unfortunately, hasn't had much success with them. He told our class about Black Swan opportunities and how blog posts are a lot like Black Swan because you never know who's attention you'll grab. He noted that Black Swan opportunities are nothing but work and parties. He had a good explanation of scalable work and how the internet can be a tool for being successful (if you're lucky). I liked how he gave us examples of people who used the internet for success such as "the wine guy" and the person who basically traded a house for a red paperclip. Interesting stuff.

Scavenger Hunt

I kind of underestimated the scavenger hunt we had to do in class. I thought I would be able to find everything by simply typing it in Google but it was much more than that. My group had a pretty hard time finding some of them because you had to be really specific on keywords. We actually managed to find them all through Google .. some people don't realize how powerful this search engine really is.

Concept of Convergence

I didn't really grasp a meaning to "technological convergence" so I looked it up. Basically, the meaning of "technological convergence" is the tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks.

"Today, we are surrounded by a multi-level convergent media world where all modes of communication and information are continually reforming to adapt to the enduring demands of technologies, “changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other" is a quote I took from wikipedia. In other words, technology is always evolving so devices, such as cell phones, always change/upgrade to keep up with how fast technology increases. In the past, cell phones were used mainly for communicating but currently, we have phones that have the internet, a calculator, a calendar, a camera, etc. built into it.

There are so many devices that were used for one specific purpose, but now are used for other things. Game systems, for example, were used primarily to play video games. Now we have consoles that have a music player, the internet, a DVD player, and other things that game systems didn't have before. I actually have a friend who uses his Xbox 360 to mainly play DVDs rather than play games. A couple years ago when I had a Nintendo 64, I never would have imagined that a game console would be used as a DVD player .. and that was only a couple years ago. It's seriously scary and amazing how fast technology is increasing.

Physical Documents vs. Online Documents

Physical documents and online documents are similar in the way that you can get information on a certain topic but depending on which one you view, the information may not be accurate. Physical documents are usually written by a person who is professional in that topic and the document is revised then published depending on its accuracy. If a person was viewing a physical document, he/she shouldn't have to worry on whether or not it is legit as they will see the author of the document and at most times, references the author uses.

Online documents can be written by anybody on the web so the reader has to be aware that the information they see can be false. Some online documents do not have an author, but the ones that do are usually from a credible site. You should be able to determine whether or not an online document has legit information by the website its on and the references the author uses. Also, most online documents are regularly updated and that would probably be the biggest difference between physical and online documents. The author of an online document has much more control over their document, whether it be editing, moving, or deleting at any time; which an author of a physical document cannot do once their document is published.

Searching for Myself

So I did a vanity search on Google and sadly, I couldn't find myself. What surprised me though, was how many "James Cha"s there actually were. I honestly thought my name wasn't very common compared to most, but there are actually a few "James Cha"s in the world, mostly in Korea. So after failing to find myself, I tried to put in a few keywords after my name, such as "myspace" and "youtube," and I still couldn't find myself (even though I have a myspace account AND a youtube video). I guess I'm either a horrible searcher or the internet hates me.. I'll go with being a bad searcher though.

Guest Speaker: Mark Briggs

Mark Briggs was nice enough to take time off and speak to our class on October 19th. He is a journalist and wrote the book, Journalism 2.0, which is about digital literacy. He runs a business and co-founded a software called Serra Media. It was interesting to have an author of a book, that was related to our class, speak to us. During our previous class, we talked about online newspapers and how it might change the future of physical newspapers and it was cool to have a person who is professional in that topic (he DID right a book about digital literacy after all) talk about it.

Briggs' talked about how his company used Serra Media and invested in an online shopping blog called Bargain Babe. This shopping blog allows people to shop for products with the best deals around their local area. It's very useful for those who want to get the best bang for their buck (which is pretty much everyone). He explained how his company used a social mapping platform that allowed newspapers to construct a website based off of the local news. Followed by that, Briggs believed that there would be a major transformation in regards to physical newspapers and magazines in the future. He showed us sites related to newspapers and magazines and how some of them required a "payment" to view certain categories. All in all, it was a good presentation and it will be interesting to see how newspaper websites will turn out in the future.

HTML

HTML, or Hyper Text Markup Language, is as interesting as it is difficult. I can honestly say that this was the first time I created my own HTML page from scratch and of course, being noob as I am, it was plain and boring. Though this was my first time creating a page, it wasn't my first experience. Back in High School, I used Myspace a lot. When I first started using it, my page was the default template. When I saw other user's pages, they were unique and had pictures, videos, and all sorts of .gifs. I was confused as to how they did that so I googled (gotta love google) on how to really customize your Myspace page. I saw HTML codes on a lot of things such as how to bold, add images, and all sorts of different options.

On Myspace, there are a lot of things you can customize, such as your layout. You can google layout generators and once you create it the way you want, there is a large HTML code at the end that you copy and paste into your Edit Profile in Myspace. When I did that, I saw the codes and how it was used to my actual profile and learned some things from it. After looking through it, it really makes more sense but of course, it is something that you would have to really study. All these codes you have to put in just to make a simple Myspace page is crazy. I think one day, there is going to be a program that would simplify making web pages. For someone to go into Notepad and type codes that could take up to days would really suck .. especially if one tiny mistake could ruin the whole page and you would have to go back and look for it.

Newspapers Online

The internet has gotten so advanced that you can read newspapers online. You can probably find any newspaper on the internet and most people would agree that it is much more convenient reading news articles online rather than having to flip every page on that giant newspaper. I remember a couple years ago seeing my dad read the newspaper (Seattle Times, etc.) every morning. Now we don't even have newspapers sent to my house.

Though newspapers online are convenient, physical newspapers are still used today for various reasons. You can't have a computer with you everywhere, so reading a newspaper is nice when you're sitting at the table eating breakfast, drinking coffee, or on a bus. Newspapers have everything-in-one too. There are comics, ads, movie times, etc. while you'll only see strictly articles online. You can, however, find everything you see in a newspaper online (comics, movie times, etc.) so it's all about whether or not you have the time to surf the web.

Honestly, I've probably read a newspaper less than 100 times in my whole life but whenever I go online (which is about everyday), I read news articles; usually the Seattle Times or New York Times. I prefer reading online news articles rather than reading the Newspaper. It is even less costly. Technology is getting so advanced that I think eventually, Newspapers (and every other publication) will be stopped and everything will be internet exclusive. We really are heading towards a Virtual World.

E-mail vs. Post-mail

So we talked a little about similarities and differences of e-mail and post-mail in my Living and Working in a Virtual World class. Obviously, both are used to send something to your desired destination. Technology has been and still is growing today. Many would say that using E-mail is more convenient than having to write a hand-written letter but even so, many people still go to the post office to send their mail.

Nowadays, almost everyone has a computer. Those that have a computer, usually have an e-mail account or 2 ... or 6. It's amazing how advanced the internet has gotten and how you can send a 100 word letter to someone across the globe in a matter of seconds. That is what most may consider the biggest difference of e-mail and post-mail; the speed. If you have a friend with a birthday coming up, you can send him/her an email and they will most likely get it right when you send it but if you want to write them a hand-written letter, you would have to send it days or maybe even a week in advance. It even costs money to send the hand-written letter while it is free to send an e-mail (if you don't consider the cost of your internet bill -_-). So why would anyone want to go out of their way to write a hand-written letter when you can just e-mail? Well obviously, not EVERYONE has an e-mail but if they did, would they prefer an e-mail rather than a letter? E-mail can be risky as it can give your computer a virus. Opening a letter wouldn't have risks like opening an e-mail does.

Personally, I would rather receive a hand-written letter from someone rather than an e-mail. Like I said earlier, it is more time consuming and costly to send a letter compared to sending an e-mail, so the person who sent it obviously took the time and care to send ME a letter rather than just typing out some words. I would consider e-mailing more like instant-messaging rather than comparing it to sending letters from the post office. Hypothetically, if I never heard of e-mail or post-mail and someone described the similarities and differences between them to me, I would probably choose to use e-mail. You just have to experience receiving both an e-mail and post-mail and see how you feel. Everyone has their own opinion but if I received a hand-written letter from a friend that I haven't heard from in a while, I would feel much happier compared to receiving an e-mail from that friend.