For all my Bloggers! (Facebook gets credit for yet another miracle)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7983725.stm

The above link is an article in the BBC news about a boy who was trying to commit suicide. The boy apparently was over-dosing and at the last minute decided to get help. He sent a private message to a girl in Maryland saying something along the lines of harming himself. The girl told her mom, who according to the article,
"who called local police. The police called a "special agent" at the White House, the British Embassy in Washington and finally the police control room in Abingdon."
"Staff narrowed down his location to eight possible addresses, and officers found the teenager at the fourth house they tried. He had taken an overdose, but was still conscious."
NOW this is PR!!! Facebook has dozens of stories like this where in one way or another their networking site saved a life or dozens of lives. Their PR is perpetual and seems to be both constant and self-creating

Second Life

People who use second life should get back in touch with their first life.
I mean honestly why would you want to have your school present on second life?
Oh I know so you can teach classes right?? Not! it has been tried before, and the problem, with it is that you have to teach the whole class (except one person) how to use the thing. And then after you can try to have a class. And the benefits are that you can be at home or across the world, yet present on the Internet. Well I Don't BUY IT! This is just another BS excuse for wasting the university's money, and every ones time. It is like teaching someone how to play golf, when all they really want to do is play tennis. It requires you to learn another Internet language that is only useful within the confines of the network. It is no wonder I couldn't get a straight answer as to why its beneficial for student life, and just because other universities have it does not make it necessary for ours.

In my opinion Second Life has sailed and i don't think it is practical anymore. Their are far better networks to be communicating with, networks that don't make you pay to play a silly game to get your serious point across. I don't know how this got approved for financing, but i do know we nee more important updates like putting our school newspaper online to extend reach and readership. Now that is something educational, and who knows it might help us receive future funding.

Face to face interaction is important. That is the kind of education we should be hearing about. I have heard about second life for the third and final time at St. Edward's. I'm starting to think that it serves more as a course filler than an educator.

Facebook is HUGE

If you haven't heard yet facebook has doubled its size in 8 months from 100 million to 200 million. It is clearly one of the most powerful social networking sites and is constantly evolving and updating itself to keep up with Twitter.

"Facebook has also become a vehicle for broad-based activism — like the people who organized on the site last year and mobilized 12 million people to march in protests around the globe against practices of the FARC rebels in Colombia."

This is just one example of its multiple purposes. A recent conern for people my age 18-25 is that their parents are starting to use Facebook. This is a problem for many users who joined the network when it was just for college students. Now it is an international goliath.
My question is where is the virus that will take it all down?? It is becoming an important target as bussinesses and personal info is flooded through the gates of Facebook.

Podcast

Click picture to hear podcast!

Wow!! you really don't know what a podcast is until you actually make one yourself. Without the free help of Audacity, we would all be lost. The most difficult aspect of the podcast was recording an interview. We chose to interview through Skype, and there was no program that allowed us to record our Skype conversation, and because of that we hit a brick wall. We tried a couple different ideas and then we ultimately decided to have the person we were interviewing download Audacity.

This turned out to be perfect, after we straightened a few kinks we were able to have him send us his recording. What made this work was a synchronized recording (on both ends), that made the questions and answers fall under the same time space. Then, Audacity overlapped the two audio clips perfectly and thereafter we were able to edit particular sound bytes.

Our podcast is interesting in that the person we interviewed was one of the first persons to post a picture (any material) of the AA plane that landed in the Hudson river. He used the social network Twitter to send his breaking news. He was later contacted by major media networks and his story was disseminated on television and not just the Internet.

Show Notes:

00:10 Ben (I) introduce the show, speakers, and special guest, Janis Krums

01:58 Ginny interviews Janis about his experience after posting the famous Twit Pic

5:28 Reanne and Janis discuss social media and citizen journalism

09:15 Austin presents concluding thoughts, outro, and thanks to Janis

Blogjects

The image to the left is of a reconnaissance pigeon. These pigeons were once used during WWI as a means of spying. This was first developed in 1903 by German engineer Julius Neubronner. The camera was ridged with a timer which would systematically snap photos when the bird was in flight.

It all started with a note tied to the foot of the pigeon and has now evolved to Blojects. Blogjects, for the those of you who don't know, are any object that can be connected to the Internet and streaming any information that object may encounter. The first study involves a device attached to pigeons which measured air pollution in LA. It also used a GPS system to track the birds flight. The information measured on the mounted device would be streamed directly to the Internet, like a blog.

I found this to be amazing just think what scientist can do with this. They can ultimately share all their information to the public allowing i different kind of information flow. Just think whale migrations, your cat/dog, and any other species you can possibly think of. People can make their own conjectures. For instance, we can actually see the air pollution And just think about what this could do for the spy world.

Their is a current deer blogging. His name is "Thor" and he blogs every 5 minutes by sharing his GPS location with all of us. This blogject could be used by rangers, biologist, meteorologist, etc. If you can image seeing what your hunting season could look like. By tagging one or a couple you could see what their patterns may be over a years time. One might argue, well scientist already do that. But their information is not available to all of us, and certainly not in a timely fashion. Just imagine how valuable this could be to a journalist, he could literally be pitched this story by a deer and it could be timely, valuable, and novel.

Newspapers, nothing really new afterall

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100256908
This is an interesting NPR podcast/article. It is about one of Americas oldest newspapers in Hartford, Connecticut. The idea of the article is exactly what we have been talking about. There are two people mentioned one a smart professional who turns to the internet to get a new job. The second is an old timer who looks at the newspaper front and back for his new job. The main problem the article poses is that the newspaper is losing money and having trouble competing with other medias, much like all newspapers. What they argue is that if they lose their LOCAL newspaper, then they will be losing a sense of community. A man states that the community will be out the window if they have people online just looking through a 100 different articles a day.

What do you think?? Is this community what really makes us Americans? Don't we and can't we live without it??

E-Book Blogger, which could only have been blogged

OK this article has a lot of interesting information in it. Information that can be useful to all bloggers. The most interesting point he makes is about the 'Magic Middle'. This middle class of bloggers tends to write about issues that are relevant on a personal level. These people tend to influence customers and people by their online blogging communities on a more real and personal level.
These are things i can agree with because you may be able to pitch and protect your product online, but actually touching real people is the key element, and just offering or recommending a product does not do that. Human emotions have to be conveyed some how so that person can feel important on an emotional level. However, it seems like doing this through the Internet would be much harder. This all relates back to the Cluetrain manifesto idea about each conversation being a market.
I do not necessarily agree with all his statements, like when he compares journalism to blogging, but he does correct himself.
Today I thlink this statement would have writers' knees buckling and people like Brokaw Broke and in Awe. Journalism, for me, does not coincide with blogging. While they are both effective ways for reaching an audience blogging still does not have the same reputation. In part because blogs are loaded with opinion, unidentified sources, and for the most part lacking substantial language and spelling use. Also because it generally requires no formal education and is not backed by any legitimate organization. While there is still good and reliable information being blogged, there is still an enormous number of people that cannot be trusted. Good example of this is his e-book, where there are frequent misspellings. With each misspelling his argument loses validity.