The article “Digilante justice” discusses a unique way for people to publicize indecent behavior of everyday life. Some of the sites that allow you to vent are very useful in my opinion. These websites are an ultimate way to vent and discuss the indecent behavior of our fellow citizens as we can all agree that each and every one of us has experienced frustrations associated with various acts of indecent behavior in our society. Digilantes represent the group within our society who are technically inclined and take the time to identify the things are done wrong within our society on everyday basis.

The idea that there is a population within our society that watches out for you is great, but that also means that you have to responsibility for your own actions, since someone could also be watching you too. I believe that the sites that exist out there are useful and probably do encourage a better judgment on behalf of us, citizens of this country.

The article “The age of Egocasting” by Christine Rosen talks about Tivo use and the fact that many such inventions only provide a way to narrow our minds and worldview, as we only watch what we choose to watch, without provided opportunity to stumble upon something accidently while flipping channels that could ultimately widen our point of view by providing us with exposure to something other than what we are used to.

I think this is an important observation and an issue, since it’s a valid concern within our often times already narrow minded society, where we get to choose everything, only exposing ourselves to things as well as people that we like or that are like us.

I personally don’t own any such device and find it useful to search thru channels and watch random stuff that I probably wouldn’t have I actually owned something like Tivo, this is how I find my new favorite shows or find out something new is by browsing randomly, not pre-selecting. But one thing is worth mentioning is that in our time challenged society is it a realistic expectation with all of the devices available on the market? People live within a society where there is a definite time deficit, so isn’t it naturally the inevitable that as a result of that, our leisurely activities will reflect a growing narrowing of our views due to the time constraint?

Questions:

1. How have various “digilante” websites impacted your life?

1. Do you think that the existence of these sites offers more positives or negatives? And why?

1. What do you think is the future of this service to our community?

The distribution model of OLPC consists of the idea of laptops being sold to governments and later distributed through the ministries of education. The estimated cost of the laptops was expected to be approximately $135 per laptop, although by the time the manufacturing was finished they were available for about $199 each. The laptops would be low powered computers that use flash memory instead of hard drive and the wireless networking would have a much greater range than typical consumer laptops. These laptops would be given to students and will ultimately remain the property of the child as well as be available in all of the languages of the participating countries.

Some of these participating countries include Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, Mexico, Haiti, Peru, Afghanistan, Cambodia and etc.

The importance of this organization is great, as the goal of the foundation is to provide children around the world with new opportunities, to experiment and educate themselves. This project is of great importance as it is one of the current attempts to work towards eliminating or at least diminishing the digital divide by providing education as well as access to the future generations.

There is however, an ongoing controversy regarding the mission of OLPC as the large scale purchasers would be offered the choice of adding an extra cost, to which OLPC has responded saying that the mission remains  to provide learning for children and that the means and ends as often happens, got confused. OLPC claim that they are promoting several models, including some for testing purposes.

Intel Corp. has officially dropped out of a nonprofit project, as the two sides have been feuding over Intel’s aggressive marketing of a low-cost laptop of its own design in many of the same countries that OLPC had been targeting.

In my opinion the OLPC organization as well as its mission is very important. Regardless of the controversy surrounding it, it’s one of the current attempts to provide more laptops to more children therefore providing more education, access as well as an attempt to diminish the digital divide that is so prevalent across the globe. However I can’t go without mentioning the fact that off course we live in a capitalist country and unfortunately that means that if there is a slightest opportunity to make money, that opportunity will be exploited and often times drained dry. I would also have to add that as with any organization especially when it comes to non-profit, often times, the means are truly overestimated. While it’s obvious that the freedom of increasing the price of these laptops goes against the mission all together, the idea itself is powerful and undeniably important and should be without a doubt further promoted.

Citations:

The rise of the low-cost laptop. (2008, June 7). Economist, Retrieved March 6, 2009, from Academic Search Complete database.

Hamm, S., Smith, G., & Lakshman, N. (2008, June 16). SOCIAL CAUSE MEETS BUSINESS REALITY. BusinessWeek, Retrieved March 6, 2009, from Academic Search Complete database.

For my discussion  on the digital divide I looked up the article written by Amanda Lenhart called “The ever-shifting Internet population” which provides a new look at the Internet access and the idea of digital divide.

This article uses the report provided by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that provides research that is based primarily on a national telephone survey conducted amoung 3,553 Americans between March 1-31 and May 2-19, 2002.

The survey provides insights thru interviews with non-users and new Internet users and helps clarify and contrast the social demographic as well as other factors of non users vs. users of the Internet.

The members of the groups to whom I presented were very nice, they brought up a lot of interesting issues and personal reflection to my presentation. The opinions varied, but all were very enlightening, as it offered a perspective and view that I may have not considered have I not done the presentation.

Overall, my experience as a discussion leader with a small group of people was really great, as it was much less terrifying than presenting in front of the whole class.

This article uses the report provided by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that provides research that is based primarily on a national telephone survey conducted amoung 3,553 Americans between March 1-31 and May 2-19, 2002.

The survey provides insights thru interviews with non-users and new Internet users and helps clarify and contrast the social demographic as well as other factors of non users vs. users of the Internet.

Youtube video links on digital divide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcboST0evqE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6AQv2l6UsM&feature=related

Citation:

Lenhart, A. (2003). “The Ever-Shifting Internet Population, A New Look at Internet and the Digital Divide”. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved February 28, 2009, from Academic Search Complete.

 Questions:

What are the benefits of extending wireless connection to the remote parts of the developing world?

What difficulties do you see us facing in extending wireless connection to the remote parts of the developing world?

Should mandatory training be provided to people free of cost when extending wireless connection to the remote parts of the world?

Author also discusses the importance of involvement of social media when it comes to business, such as the use of blogs, email and various search engines. I think that just like with any medium the importance of the business world keeping up with the constant progress and evolution of our society is great. In order to advertise and create an appeal for products and continue to be able to do that successfully the business world absolutely has to adjust to different aspects of growing use of technology by ways of adapting. This article on digital branding describes exactly that, the importance of business world adjusting and adapting to the new society, where people rely so greatly on the digital media.

The article by Phil Muncaster “How to Strengthen Customer Bonds” also reinforces the idea of businesses needing to strengthen their marketing by adjusting to the new world where our society relies so heavily on digital media. The author talks about how the importance of online marketing has increased significantly as well as how companies are finding the its important to find their customers not just how to appeal to them, by taking into account social networking. The article describes how businesses now are finding the importance and need of learning the new online tools in order to successfully reach their customers as well as strengthen bonds with their customers not to mention retain their clientele.

Both of these articles reflect the reality of the need to adapt to today’s progressive society where people do most of their shopping online for convenience purposes. We live in a busy world full of pools of ever growing options for the consumer with less and less time available to us. As the pool of options grows, so does the competitiveness of the market. In order to appeal to new customers and retain old ones in the business world, the businesses have to struggle just as much as us to adjust to the fast pace of our society. The problem seems to be that these business in order to stay successful have to stay a step ahead which is becoming harder and harder to do as the pool of options grows more vast.

Both sites also have the mainstream layout of advertisements and easy to locate headlines at the top of the page as most of them do.

What I found interesting with the Kentucky Courier Journal was how many different tabs of all different types were available. I don’t think I have ever seen that many that are that specific. This made searching for any topic much easier which I’m sure the users find extremely convenient.

With Houston Chronicle I found that they were using a list of tools a little different than the Courier-Journal when allowing users to share information, although some of them were still the same nonetheless fewer.

What I also noticed was that the Courier-Journal’s website seemed far much busier with advertisements than Houston Chronicle, yet it still seemed to be easier to navigate due to their very specific variety of tabs.

Overall, I found more similarities rather than differences with both of these newspaper sites, especially in the ways that they share information.

Kathy Gill’s article “The Race of Websites 2004” was very interesting to read as it talks about the differences between the Bush and Kerry Administration websites for their campaigns in 2004.

The article describes the structure of the candidate’s websites, as well as organization, links, loading time and text formatting.

It is clear in the article that Kerry’s website is more user friendly than that of Bush.

Bush’s website seemed to focus on being interactive, which in the end only created clutter and more confusion for anyone visiting the site.

What I took away from this article are the most important aspects of making a user friendly website. As the article clearly pointed out the flaws in each one of the candidates websites, it was very obvious to see that the most important thing that was omitted in both was the “user-friendly” aspect of the sites.

It was also made clear from the article that older voter population would need a better and easier to use site because of their age and possible health conditions that should be taken into account. Where as younger voters would need a site that could download faster and keep their attention. I know me personally, if the site takes too long to download, I don’t waste my time waiting and just leave.

In the article on “Organization Man: Joe Trippi Reinvents Campaigning” Noem Scheiber discusses the usual low turnout for Democratic primaries that has recently increased due to the use of Internet and more access to information. What was accomplished by Dean’s campaign due to Internet was truly unbelievable.  Howard Dean’s website created somewhat of a community, a social network, where active participation was promoted among citizens. Thru his interactive website people were able to express their opinions about politics and it also proved beneficial to Dean’s fund raising.

It is clear that politicians in their campaigns have caught up to the importance of the Internet and how it helps disseminate useful information when it comes to campaigning.

The future struggle for candidates and their campaigns will be to make Internet as useful as possible by adjusting every possible thing to make their websites more “user- friendly” and convenient for their audience in order to capture as many individuals attention as possible.

Questions:

1. What do you think is the future of online politics?

2. How big of a role do you think the Internet played in the most recent presidential election?

3. How well do you think the websites reflect a presidential candidate and their stand on certain issues?