Sam's Blog :)

Head on over to my new blog!

2010-07-13T18:18:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody, I've started a new blog that you should all check out and tell everybody about. Its a blog for tall girls who need pants and jeans in long inseams. Spread the news!

http://longinseams.blogspot.com/

Voting

2010-02-23T16:36:00.001-05:00

Please help me out with this great opportunity: http://www.zinch.com/Voting/Regionals.aspx?GroupId=59#Samantha-Williams

The more votes, the closer I get to my goal and believe me, this would mean the world to me!

CCHS Library Learning Commons RESPONSE

2010-01-11T12:45:00.002-05:00

Blog

This lady is talking about how you need to stay one step ahead of what the current trend in technology is. She talks about her school and keeping it up to date with tech stuff. I think that this is important for all schools to think about as we move forward in the times, and eventually all schools will have to integrate technology and the more the better. There is never too much technology when it comes to learning because it can only enhance ones learning experience.

TED Talks Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

2010-01-07T10:28:00.002-05:00

Ted Talks video

Ok so he starts off with making a joke about how he was a failure in law school, then goes onto something called the candle problem, which is about how we only see things as what they are labeled as, and it takes longer to realize that we can use things in multiple ways , not just the way they are meant to be used. He then goes on to talk about how business works by offering incentives to workers, and that is the way it is...you work for the incentive, not because you want to do the work. It is more important now to use our right sides of our brain because that is the "creative" part where we can look past the fact that the candle problem has to be straightforward, and see that we can use the box that holds the tacks can hold the candle too, that is what business needs today. I think that this does apply to me or will apply to me in the future as using the right side of your brain wil become more and more necessary, popular, and in demand. Also, it is good to look past the obvious and analyze meanings that are not there at first glance.

Harvard business review: networking reconsidered

2010-01-06T14:29:00.002-05:00

Article

This starts out by talking about the rise in popularity of social media and networking, stating that for some people this seems like abad thing. It says that tacit knowledge is the most important type of knowledge nowadays and that this knowledge is also the most difficult to express to other people. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that we learn through life experiences, and the things that we pick up just by living out lives. It is not possible to network these ideas, and use a large scale social networking platform in order to talk about our tacit knowledge because it i too hard to talk about. It is a better idea to find common ground and build trust and confidence in the person you want to share your tacit knowledge with so that it is easier. Another big idea in this idea is that in old times, you always knew that if you were saying or sharing something, you knew who you were targeting your speech towards. With new social networking, we put stuff out there witout knowing who the heck in the world is going to see it so it takes an element out of the old equation. Then in the end it says that this social networking is all a success so I guess they really think its good and were just comparing the new social networking to how it has been in the past.

Iphone popularity

2009-12-18T10:28:00.002-05:00

mashable article

This article comes as no surprise. Read it and see why! It just makes sense that the iphone is very popular not only in America but across the entire globe. Especially Japan and France...

Iphone popularity

2009-12-18T10:28:00.000-05:00

mashable article

Red Balloons-DARPA

2009-12-16T14:48:00.001-05:00

DARPA red balloon challenge
This is a cool challenge that works to combine multiple platforms of social media and offers a prize for the team of people who can most effectively use these tools. MIT won because they were good at using the resources, and also because they offered cash prizes. Things like twitter and facebook were used for people to communicate across the country with the coordinates of supposed red balloon sitings. This was a cool idea, but I think the money should go to charity since it was given for something fun and not really earned by doing much except collaborating.

A new way of looking at the world...

2009-12-07T13:14:00.002-05:00

a new way of looking at the world
This article is about data and what that means. It also talks about how the meaning and definition of data and how that is changing so that it is more broad and encompasses more. It can now mean statistics from sites liuke Facebook and Twitter, Flickr and even your emotions. It then jumps to stuff about phone apps and what they can do, mainly advancement in what they can provide the user, using college students seacing the city for each other as an example. The main idea of the article is that personal and global data can now be aggregated and put together to make data that wasnt put together prior to technological advancements.

Mashable tech news

2009-12-03T10:31:00.002-05:00

Mashable Black Screen of Death
This article is about the "Black Screen of Death" that has been occuring with microsoft based computers. It blanks the screen and locks out users from their own computers. The problem was initially thought to be at the fault of Microsoft, however, it is now being discovered that the black screenof death isnt being caused by microsoft issues but by malware. So Microsoft, while they are not the ones to blame for the crashes, are nontheless not very happy about the situation because it is not good publiciity for their company.

The War for the Web

2009-11-19T10:27:00.002-05:00

The War for the Web Basically, I think that the reason facebook unlinks hyperlinks that come from outward sources, and the reason why you have to have "apples blessing" before putting an application on the iphone is because they would like to keep some sort of authority. Since so many people can do their own things on these websites and through these companies, like make your own pages or websites or create your own applications, apple and facebook use their limiting powers as the creators and big company to limit the power of the millions of people who use their product. Their websites do give the power to the peopl, but I do not think that they want to give 100% of the power to the people.

Mashable response

2009-11-11T14:44:00.000-05:00

I really liked this mashable article that we had to read, because it was all the good stories from the internet that you dont normally hear. Usually you hear about things that go wrong with people over the internet, but these all had happy and successful endings. I think it is an important thing to read for anybody trying to gain popularity on the web and trying to be noticed because it talked a lot about what it takes to be successful and have people follow you on blogs and twitter and buy your proucts. It is not very helpful to me personally since I only have like twenty followers on twitter and dont have a company or product to promote, but for somebody more established in the world of internet this article could be a great help.

Chapters 4/5 of Here Comes Everybody

2009-11-11T14:36:00.002-05:00

This book is definetly better than Tribes! Chapter 4 is all about filtering and editing that occurs on social networking sites and other sites like blogs. It talks about that fact that people post things to these websites with no restrictions, it is only after the fact that their submitted materials are reviewed and filtered, and subsequently removed if it is necessary. This is cool because things happen instantly, there is no waiting for your comment or post to be screened and then posted, you click the post button and it shows up right then and there. Chapter 5 is about collaborative production, meaning a lot of people working on one idea. This can be difficult because there are a lot of people to begin with, they all want to speak and all have different ideas, it is hard to stay organized with the more people you get in the group. However, with internet and technology it is easier now to successfully collaborate and produce in large groups. Especially with the rise of real-time messaging and things like Google Wave, it will be easier to get all you ideas out from your head and put out on the table to the group without having to wait your turn to speak, and it will also be stored in an organized place to refer back to dicussion topics and decisions.

Google Dashboard

2009-11-05T10:53:00.002-05:00

I never even knew this existed! I don't think that I am all of the sudden going to start using the dashboard, but now I know where all the "statistics" for my gmail and google account can be found, and it even connects to my blog (this one!). It is very nice to have everything in one place for me to see without having to go through different pages and sites. www.google.com/dashboard

hyperlinks for pulling everything together post...

2009-11-02T13:18:00.002-05:00

http://www.amazon.com/Tribes-We-Need-You-Lead/dp/1591842336 TRIBES
http://codybrown.name/2009/10/25/a-public-can-talk-to-itself-why-the-future-of-news-is-actually-pretty-clear/ CODY BROWN'S BLOG
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/microsoft-google-and-the-bear/?ref=technology MICROSOFT, GOOGLE AND THE BEAR
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_web_in_five_years.php ERIC SCHMIDT ARTICLE
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/309855 FACEBOOK STUDY GROUP
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/tennessee-woman-arrested-facebook-poke/story?id=8807685 WOMAN ARRESTED FOR 'POKE'
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/0143114948/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257186007&sr=1-1 HERE COMES EVERYBODY

Pulling all the threads together...

2009-11-02T12:42:00.001-05:00

SO this post will be about pulling all the threads from diglit together. We have read so many articles/blogs/books and watched numeroud videos on TEDtalks or Youtube that there are bound to be connections between what people have said in all these resources so I will try to figure them out right now! The first connection that I find is between the first chapter of Here Comes Everybody and the blog post by Cody Brown . The main point of the first chapter, in between the story of Sasha and Ivanna and Evan was the power that a group of people can have, and the accesibility that the internet can provide them. This reminds me of Cody Brown's blogpost because he talked about the power that people can have to be thr reporters themselves instead of having to direct the news to the reporters who then are editors and choose what is sent back out into the public. Being on twitter throughout this class has showed me the ability that people have to show the world breaking news on their own with nobody monitoring what they post. It gives a power to the people.
Another connection I saw was the book Tribes and the article Microsoft, Google and the Bear . Tribes talks about tribes obviously, and states how everybody has the power to be the leader and everybody should assume their roles as leaders for a tribe of theirs especially since it is so easy with internet and technology. The NYTimes article talks about competition between Google and Microsoft handsets (cell phones) and how they both strive to lead in their industry. Tribes doesnt necesarily talk about competition between tribes but, there is a small connection in the leadership area and striving to be the leader and on top of your tribe or industry of handsets.
Another connection is between the Cody Brown article and the article about the future of the internet that we read of the NING: I think there is a connection with the theme of what will the future look like although Cody Brown talks about the furutre of newspapers and journalism and Eric Schmidt talks about the future of the internet. The power will be with the people and that is reflected in how people will be independent of reporters and how the internet will reflect the masses of the world, i.e. most of it will be in Chinese since that is the most in demand. The things we have been doing in class so far are all very interesting and I also liked articles like the Facebook study group issue that we had to write out opinions on
and also the woman breaking the terms of her restraining order on facebook in this article: So there are some connections made between ideas and topics we have talked about in class during the first quarter and as we move into the second quarter and finish up the class I am sure there will be many more connections to draw across the class.

Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years

2009-10-29T10:45:00.002-04:00

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_web_in_five_years.php
This is soooooo weird/interesting the only thing I am focusing on is that in 5 years (equivalent apprently to ten years, since internet and computers are much faster and can do double the amount of work in haf the amount of time) the internet will be majorly in Chinese!!!! What does that mean?! Will I have to hone my chinese skills in order to understnad certain websites or parts of the internet? Its intriguing and I am seriously wondering what the future of the internet will look like.

Adam Smith's Principles in effect

2009-10-28T14:37:00.000-04:00

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/microsoft-google-and-the-bear/?ref=technology
This article reminded me immediately of learning about Adam Smith and the "invisible" guiding hand in economics in the tenth grade. This basically means that competition spurs itself, companies will always try to outdo one another. This says that Microsoft and Google are not trying to outdo Apple, which is probably a good idea since their products are totally different and on different levels. However, the competition between Microsoft and Google is more compatible. Google makes their handset available to all, but Microsoft insinuates that it is skimpy because no money is coming back from it. Why cant Google not be receiving any money and still have a motive? Just because they arent getting a profit means they are going to produce a crappy product? Sounds like Microsoft is jealous because Google is doing something good....

2009-10-28T14:32:00.000-04:00

follow me on twitter: samantha5445
:)

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky Chapter 1 response

2009-10-23T10:28:00.000-04:00

The begining story of Ivanna, Evan, and Sasha is written well and kept me interested. I very rarely let myself lose things, but I know that when I do it is the most frustrating thing in the world! I can understand how Ivanna felt losing her phone with such important information, although Im not sure I understand why she put such valuable information only on her phone? It seems like an accident waiting to happen....but....Sasha was ridiculous to not give the phone back when she was dicovered to have it. Obviously her moral compass is a bit off and she was not raised with good morals, which is apparent in her family's attempts to cover her up and just continue to pile up the lies.
It is true that the main point of the story is not a stupid sixteen year old with no common courtesy and two people trying to get the phone back, but that the main point is the power that a group of people can potentially have. With the internet and communication tools available to the general public in todays world, things like this can go public in an instant. Sure Evan had a good idea posting the issue to the internet, but he would not have gotten any support for the cause had he not told other people and got lucky about being on Digg and so many people looking at the webpage.
There seems to be a certain amount of chance and luck with hitting it big on the internet and getting people to follow your cause. It relates to us trying to get more followers on twitter or on our blogs, we are relatively nothing in the internet world and it is hard to make ourselves known, Evan seemed to already have some place on the internet, had his own blog and stuff, and so maybe it was easier for him, but he was still lucky to have people join his cause and take it to heart the way they did because they would not have been able to get Sasha arrested had they not had so much support.

Reaction: Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action

2009-10-19T12:43:00.000-04:00

http://thejournal.com/Articles/2008/05/21/Social-Networking-Learning-Theory-in-Action.aspx?Page=1
This article talks about pros and cons of social networking. It has different sections talking about different ways that social networking such as for creativity and networking and other stuff. It all makes sense and talks about the usefullness of social networking sites but also talks about teachers and insitutions trying to suppress the use of social networking by students.

Tribes

2009-10-16T10:24:00.000-04:00

The first thing that comes to my mind when writing a little synopsis of this book is that it was sooooo repetitive, but in between all the repitition there was some cool information and good reading. The size of the pages and large font made it easy to read but it was also an interesting book and was written in a style that kept me interested. It wasnt like other boring books we sometimes have to read in school. I liked all the references to the Grateful Dead, because it made it seem more of a modern book and i could relate to it more so than a book written in colonial times or english literature (even though I personally do not listen to the Grateful Dead) It was good to get off the computers for an assignment in class and read this short book.

David Logan

2009-10-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

This was an interesting video that we watched in class today. The different stages that he talked about in our lives and with tribes were somewhat confusing. The most interesting part for me was that he said that only 2 percent of tribes make it to stage 5, the stage where life is great, and that 2 percent are the tribes that make changes in the world. They had to go through my life sucks, and all the other stages in order to realize not only their lives but life is great and I think that is the reason why they are able to make the changes in the world, because they have an understanding on life and the world that other tribes that havent made it to stage 5 do not have.

first 40 pages

2009-10-05T13:13:00.000-04:00

The first 40 pages of Tribes were a quick and easy read, probably due to the shortness and big text on the pages. My initial reaction was some annoyance with the amount of repetition and use of the word tribe so much. I understand that the title of the book is Tribes, but it got to be a bit much after a while. It seemed as though the author had a good main point about tribes (that the internet is changin tribe dynamics and making it easier for everybody to lead) but that he was taking that one point and spreading it too far, overusing it. It was like the classic example of spreading too litle butter over too much bread. All of this said, the point that the author made in the first 40 pages is an interesting one. It is exciting and motivational to think that anybody can now be the leader of a tribe thanks to the internet, it gives a new sense of power to the people.

Blog

2009-10-02T10:41:00.000-04:00

This is my blog about Tribes