A Great video culture of learning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg&feature=player_embedded

Dating Game

While I find the aspect of on-line dating odd, I have to admit that I am in a long term relationship with someone I meet on-line.
I got divorced after 21 years of marriage. I am older and the bar scene just didn’t appeal to me. I was fine being alone. Many of my friends and relatives were dating from places like match.com. My initial perspective was always the same, “How bad does it have to get to resort to meeting someone on the internet.”
The article Assessing Attractiveness in On-line Dating Profiles was interesting on how they assessed attractiveness from profiles given. They talk about the face-to- face being a rich medium. While you can meet interesting people on-line, face-to face cannot even compare. I met or more “reconnected” with old class mates and “connected” on a very intellectual level, but some that I finally did have a face-to-face meeting with would never have worked out on a romantic level. The multiple channels of communication were opened up when I finally met with them. Things like how they held themselves, their voice, body language and so on. Thees channels of communication were more revealing as far as a physical connection.
I eventually signed up for Face Book. While this article classifies this as a social networking Web site, I found that it was a good source for dating or meeting people. I had cousins suggest friends that they thought I was compatible with. I had read too many articles about on-line dating disasters or really scary situations. I knew that meeting someone that a friend suggested that it was like getting a personal referral rather then a complete stranger. While I never did find a date or meet up with any of these suggested friends, I did have some great conversations.
On Face Book it was obvious who was single. Their profiles were very detailed as well as pictures of themselves. The article talks about the importance of posting pictures to increase potential dates. I myself found it vain and sometimes funny. The person that I am with had no pictures of himself on FB. He had pictures of his kids, a car that he had rebuilt, and of different activities he enjoyed. I found that attractive because he came across as not being vain, which is my personal perspective of people who post hundreds of shots of themselves.
I don’t think that using on-line dating source is as odd as I use to. If something happened and I found myself single again, I still do not think I could do the match.com thing. I got lucky in a flukey sort of way through this internet phenomena.

MUDD was a little bit muddy...

I tried, I really tried. I read and reread the instructions and still could not enter this MUD world successfully. I cheated and had my nephew do it. He did a really cool name, devinedevin, well cool as you can get with little time and pressure from your Aunty. It took him no time to figure out what he was doing, I sat in amazement as he maneuvered all around the places that I was completely stumped. He got high fives and cheers, from who I have no idea. He got weapons and ammunition gifts and then after his half hour he bid them Aloha and left. He did get some negative feedback at that time.
I had originally tired to sign in as Lisalove, an obvious girl name. It was obvious that I was stumped. It was nothing compared to my nephew. I am not sure if I got kicked off because of my warring illiteracy or that I was a female. I am pretty sure it had more to do with my illiterate skills. I got no high fives or cheers. I got a few, “Huh?” or “Is this person serious?” or “Good-bye” No reference to my obvious female name, but comments of my complete skill level.
I am not a person that would stay and play these games. This assignment was a bit painful.

When I was first introduced to the Second Life world I was fascinated with a real world that revolved in fictional world. I originally thought that it was made to facilitate long distant learning. Universities had set up classes that were taught by avatar professors and attended by avatar students. http://www.hawaii.edu/secondlife/
When I looked more into the Second Life site I soon realized it was much more then just a University setting, it truly was a complete second world.
I found several aspects of this world to be quite amazing, one in particular is that when you leave the Second Life world things that you have created stay and function while you are not present. The world functions independent of your presence. That in it self is hard to fathom.
The Second Life phenomena has proven to have both good and bad qualities, much like the real world.
Good Aspects:
Individuals can experiment with their creativity.
People with debilitating deceases can function as whole beings with no disabilities.
Opportunities to create business and make money seem to be limitless.
While choices have less to no consequences, this can be viewed as both good and bad.
Your new self or altar ego can experiment with things you might not in the real world. Your avatar can do so with no stigmatism that would affect your real self in the real world. Examples of this would be choosing to experiment with clothing, line of work, or how you might choose to look physically, changing your sex to be male if you are female and vise versa.
The movie Avatar, while the story line is completely based on colonialism, it is a great example of how the real life crossing over to a 3-D life. It is a small sample of becoming another being and entering into another world.
I enjoy human contact too much.
I also watched a documentary on people that have entered this Second Life. Kasi Nafus entered the Second Life world to just experiment with the avatar. She found that she did not like the clothing available for her avatar so she created a clothing line and started ab business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=S2yGqDecBzs&feature=PlayList&p=57AD5CC0252818E7&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=21
From what I could see she had a hard time being taken seriously in the real world. She seemed to be a little frustrated that people did not understand how hard it is to create and that she really had a talent that is valid. I am sure that the money she is making is validation for her own self validation.
Another man, Yaniv Wolf, entered the Second Life world completely. He completely left or gave up his real life. He talked about leaving the “carbon based world.” He quoted Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I can not see this as healthy at all.

While I find this entire phenomena fascinating, it holds no interest to me what so ever. I can not help but think of the movie Wall-E. I can’t recall the entire story line but the people were stuck in chairs with computers in front of them. The people were completely obese and could not even walk, they got around on moveable chairs. I know this is a great exaggeration of becoming obsessed with the on-line world, it does have it’s point on living a physically sedentary life.
I also think that I like the human side of life.
I am in Boise, Idaho where HP, Hewlet Packard, is located. I was able to talk to a executive about Second Life and the business aspect. He said two years ago that the Vice President of the company held a meeting and said that Second Life was going to be come one of the biggest things on the internet. He wanted everyone to get an account with Second Life to look into how HP could take advantage of the business aspect and opportunities. Within one year it was completely shut down as the majority of the computers were full of porn. He said that the porn on Second Life was really the biggest thing and everyone was on it.
It is sad that a great product can be ruined or taken over by the bad stuff.
For me, I enjoy the human side too much in the real world.

Readers

The assignment for this blog was to go to Google Reader or RSS and start an account. I have most of my work on Google so I started the Google Reader.
After I watched the tutorial on Google Reader and RSS I took the precaution that it can be addicting. I went to my favorite web sites, those having to do with Hawaiian Issues and added them to my Google Reader. While they do not have a lot of movement or daily posts, it was nice to just check the Google Reader and see the newest articles when they did post, instead of me having to constantly check to see if there is anything new and sometimes missing events when I didnʻt check.
Currently I am visiting family in Boise, Idaho. I have not been able to keep up with what has been happening at home in Hawaii. I added the new Hawaii paper to my subscription list, The StarAdvertiser. I have been able to just scroll through daily and read the articles that interest me.
I also have all the web pages that I am following from our class listed on the reader. Instead of me having to go to each individual page to see what has been written, Google reader gives updates of when people post.
This has been a great tool for saving time from clicking on to several places, I can just go to one source. It was also good advice from the tutorial to not become addicted to just sitting there for hours.

Finding Information on the Web

I have used the internet to do the majority of my research. I have used the ideas and information presented on this site, mainly the way to narrow down research by asking the search engine exactly or as close to the information that I am looking for.
I think that the more we use the internet and the more we become comfortable and we tend to forget to evaluate on a consistent basis were the information is coming from.
I also think we need to remember that the internet has the least amount of control and the least amount of protection when it comes to the first amendment of the constitution. Monitoring of information is too daunting and cannot keep up with the constant change of technology.
This article gave a great criteria for evaluation of the Internet.
Scope-What is included in the resource?
Breadth-Are all aspects of the subject covered?
Time-Is the information in the resource limited to certain time periods?
Format-Are certain kinds of Internet resources excluded?
Content-Is the information factual, or opinion? Is the resource an integral resource, or has it been abstracted from another source?
Accuracy-Is the information in the resource accurate?
Authority-Dose the resource have some reputable organization or expert behind it? Examining the URL can give clues to the authority of the source.

It is vital to know be vigilant as to where we are getting our information.

The Virtual Community

I started a Facebook account two years ago. I must admit for the first two or three months I was quite obsessed about it. My kids even got a little leery of my activity. My oldest would recite statistics about people putting more value on virtual relationships than real ones. I was a bit embarrassed. Like the article Identity and Deception in Virtual Community addresses our physical self: one body, one identity.
My physical self was a newly divorced mother of six and was home alone most of my time. I worked part-time and went to school full-time. I felt like I was invisible most of the time.
When I started my account I did not know at all how it worked. I started to get all these friend requests and just accepted them all. Half of the people I did not know who they were. I was in a sense just collecting and counting the number of friends I had. I was creating my virtual self. I was catching up with old friends, classmates, relatives and old boyfriends I thought I would never see the rest of my life. I could include the positive great part of my life, leave out the crap. I eventually had to put the brakes on. A close friend of mine and I started figuring out what was private, what was public, I started deleting the people I really did not know. We started looking into the “usernet environment,” as the article calls it.
It was at this point that I really started to look at what I now know is the “Social Network.” I realized that the people I went to high school with that I thought were total geeks were actually quite interesting from their posts on Facebook. This is were I noticed, like the article talks about, that people were establishing their identity and often had issues that they were presenting or wanted to have a forum to write about their political views, social views, or moral views. It was a place were they felt they had a voice. As the article states, “There are people who expend enormous amounts of energy on a newsgroup: answering questions, quelling arguments, maintaing FAQs.”
This article was quite an eye opener as to what we are involving ourselves in concerning social networks. Too many of us enter into this virtual world blindly without realizing the consequences of our involvement.
This article was a great information tool on the virtual community.

b4- Social Media tools 101

Blogs 101- Blogs are posts that are listed in chronological order. Can be helpful to companies that are giving updates about their company or new innovative moves or products that the company is involved with. HP has a blog that has writers from different locations around the world. They give information on products as well as how they are staying active and committed to the communities or social issues that are important.
Microblogging 101- Microblogging are brief updates given throughout the day. A twitter would be a microblog. Businesses can use this to their advantage when making changes in their company and sending out twitters to inform members of updates. You can also send out one tweet for a group of people instead of contacting each person individually.
RSS 101- Instead of you going out to look for updates or new things, they come to you. You sign up for a reader account and list your favorite web sites or subscribe to the sites that you like best. This helps to cut down on the time you spend searching the web.
Photo Sharing 101- I personally use this to share pictures with my family that I do not live close to. It helps us to stay involved with each other. I have seen photographers taking shots of surfers and then posting them on web sites. They are there to purchase.
Podcasts 101- digital audio that is found via the Internet and used or listened to via the computer or portable media devices. One use professionally for podcasts is for trainers. You can put work outs on a podcast for your clients. I have used podcasts
Social News and Bookmarking 101- I have found that this is a great resource for finding jobs as well as staying informed with issues that interest you.
Video Sharing 101- My son just returned from Canada. He was in a long board skating competition. Several professional video tapers were there recording the event. If you are in this field, it is a great way to make an income. Going to events, recording them and then selling the finished product on-line.
Wikis 101- This is a great way to coordinate any event or project. I used this on several writing projects that I had groups to deal with. Instead of e-mailing the document back and forth and losing track of which document was current it was so much easier be looking at one document.

b3-Something New

I actually looked into a few sites and social networks. I am an active member of Facebook. I love this social networking site. I have been able to reconnected with classmates and classmates I have not seen for over 20 years and met relatives that I did not know. My relatives and I have been able to update our genealogy as well as swap pictures.
The first site I joined was Maoliworld. It is much like Facebook where you put in your profile, have an inbox, can invite friends and are able to comment on posts. What I like about this site is that it is based on the Hawaiian Movement. There are videos, photos, community sites, and a tab that takes you to local events that are happening in Hawaii. All posts or events are based on events that I am interested in and my community. I have been able to ask questions or view stories that have been posted from around the world concerning indigenous people and indigenous issues.
I also joined Digg. It was rated one of the top social sites. Like most all social sites you create a profile, have an inbox, can invite people to be your friends and so on. What is unique about this site is that Digg advertises as a place for people to discover and share. Members are encouraged to submit stories of interest or about something that is happening in your community. If you submission gets enough “diggs” they report about it on a you tube like video with two commenters. If you do not want to see issues you are not interested in you can block them from your personal home page. If you like social issues but not sports or political issues you can add and block.
I actually really enjoyed listening to how they presented some of the articles and the views of the different people who posted their views. The two “news casteters” or presenters were able to be very objective on the information they were presenting.
As I was looking to my different sites my son was looking on another site, Vimeo. When I asked him what it was he just said it was like You Tube. When I started clicking around what I found was that it was a site you had to sign up for like Facebook, MySpace, or other membership based sites. It is more geared for video sharing not personal posts about your day. If you went to my son’s homepage it just had a list of video’s he had posted with comments of other members. The difference between this site, Vimeo and You Tube is that anyone can post or see You Tube. Vimeo is membership based and you can control who sees your videos to a certain point.
When I was “creeping” around, (That’s what my kids said I was doing. When you look around social sites just looking.) One of the stories that seemed to get alot of “Diggs” was about Facebook and the privacy issue. They went down a list of complaints that had come out of the forum about Facebook. The bottom line was Facebook and all these “social sites” are for the most part a free service. If you are utilizing their free service, then you have to submit to the service’s rules. They also said if you are worried about information getting out into the public and not staying within your private realm, don’t post it.

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

This article gave an interesting summary and history of the phenomena of social networking.
I was fascinated to see how long ago Social networking was started. A site called Six Degrees.com launched in 1997. It took two years for another site to launch. Six Degrees closed in 2000 but over 25 companies have since launched in different places all over the world.
This article defined social networks as: as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.
I was only familiar with a few of the companies LinkedIn, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, and MySpace. I also must admit that the only reason I know of any of these sites is because I have teenage children. In my last semester of school I was also introduced to some of these different sites for the purpose of school work, one site being LinkedIN.
One main issue that has always been a main concern for all users is privacy. This article addressed this issue, but with growing technology it is going to be an ongoing process to keep up with the challenging legal conceptions of privacy. While it is the users responsibility to monitor what they are posting, once their information is up it is hard to control who can access it. “Hodge (2006) argued that the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and legal decisions concerning privacy are not equipped to address social network sites.” The way the internet is growing and developing it has the least amount of protection as well as monitoring.
It is obvious that all social networking sites were not created equal or for the same purpose. It also seems that the people using the different sites and how they used the sites helped to direct how site was developing.
To me it seems that these sites have filled a link that is being lost in the busy lives of everyday people. It helps to connect or reconnect lost connections. While I have loved the sites that I use I often fear that the users will start to lead a more sedentary life style that leaves to more communication happening on-line than in person.