Social Media

Social Networking

I am currently on 5 social networking sites. While my favorite is Facebook because of its familiarity (I've been on it since the very beginning), I found the classroom application of Twitter (as highlighted in the story Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class - via Twitter) to be very interesting. In the past, I have done some internet marketing, and one of the tools that I used was a twitter monitoring suite that allowed me to accurately see current trends and predict where they would head.

Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are digital constructs where people can come together, albeit represented as avatars. They have a host of practical uses including facilitating meetings (such as stated in Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life), teaching dangerous subjects such as welding safety, holding decentralized seminars, and many more. In a virtual world, I would probably simply be myself.

Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class — via Twitter - See more at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professor-encourages-students-to-pass-notes-during-class-via-twitter/4619#sthash.GVdtrOdT.dpuf

Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class — via Twitter - See more at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professor-encourages-students-to-pass-notes-during-class-via-twitter/4619#sthash.GVdtrOdT.dpuf

World Wide Web

"The cloud" is a reference to a new style of computing. In cloud computing, data and even applications are distributed through multiple computers connected by the internet. I believe that in the future, the web will be accessible anywhere in the world, including third world countries that don't always have access now. I believe that conventional HTTP will find competition from more private protocols such as TOR. I believe cloud applications such as Office 365 (as outlined in The Windy City Teams with Microsoft on Cloud Strategy) will take precedence over individual use applications. As the article Google’s New Director Of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, Is Building Your ‘Cybernetic friend states, more and more data is being collected about internet users. In the future of the web, I see this data being used not only for helpful purposes such as improving search results, but also for less than moral purposes such as building digital profiles in order to track individuals. Tying in with what was said earlier, reasons like the previously stated would be an excellent reason that could cause internet users to switch to privacy fostering paradigms such as TOR.