mscandura

I’m somewhat proud to say that I’ve resisted the four square trend, and I rarely check-in on facebook. However, why should I even be proud of resisting internet trends when my major is EMAC? So I kept an open mind while reading these articles regarding location awareness, knowing that after reading them, I could very well become a part of the growing trend..

“Location Literacy and Four Square in the Classroom” both surprised me, and didn’t surprise me at all at the same time. I was surprised to see that Dean Terry would actually require his students to use Four Square. To me it seem invasive, and even dangerous. However, I can’t help but agree with his reasoning. Especially for EMAC students studying this emerging media, four square is one of a kind. As he said, it can only be used (or only makes sense to use) on a mobile device. And using it really is an adequate way to familiarize yourself with it.

The New York times article drew out my own personal concerns on the issue of location awareness. By having these phones with us all of the time, wherever we go, they’re a prime outlet to be used to track us. And they’re doing just that. This really didn’t surprise me.

On my own Iphone 4s, I’m perfectly aware that my dad installed a program to see exactly where I am all the time. My name will show up, and say “University of Texas at Dallas”, or “24 Hour Fitness”. Though I feel a little bit too old to be subjected to this treatment by my parents, it also scares me. If my parents who really don’t know a darned thing about programing a mobile device, or networks can install this feature to track me at all hours of the day, who else can be doing it? Or for that matter, already is?

This same program that my parents use on me has been accused of breaking up marriages when spouses follow their significant other to the unrecognized location that shows up on their iphone, and it turns out to be their boyfriend/girlfriends house. I feel like it’s almost an ethical issue when it invades our privacy this much. It’s highly invasive, and I don’t think it’s a necessary part of out new emergent media. And I still find myself not willing use Four Square.

Last week, when we were covering accessibility I found myself sort of blind sided (really, no cold-hearted pun intended). Disability, and economic incapability is something that we do encounter in our every day lives. It comes into play in post every aspect of life. But for some reason, I didn’t even consider how it effects the use of internet.

I have considered before hand how economic capabilities effect the internet. I do recall living in New York growing up, when computers and the internet first started being used in schools. We mostly had to do everything that required working on a computer there in school, in the computer lab. Though my family had a few computers since my parents had a home office for the business that they owned, many of my peers didn’t have computers. They were just too new, and too expensive. Even though that computers are much more mainstream now, there are still plenty of people that simply don’t have the economic capability to purchase them. Of course there are libraries, and public internet cafes, but I don’t know if we’re doing enough to make it as accessible in ones home who isn’t as economically well off.

As for physical disability, I really never even considered it. When we used the screen reader in class, I was so thrown off by it. It was annoying, it was wordy, and for the most part, it didn’t even make sense. It would often just say “html”, or “web homepage”. It wouldn’t read tweets, and it said all sorts of strange things with tumblr. Obviously, my opinion is biased because I have had the ability to actually see a computer screen my whole life. So perhaps my experience would be far different if I really were visually incapacitated? Regardless, I feel like this technology has a lot of kinks to work out. I feel like it’s not easy to follow along no matter what you physical state.

Over all, this lesson has been enlightening for me. It’s made me look at the internet in a whole new light, and see that its accessibility really needs to be improved.

I found reading the digital divide, very unsettling. The reading discussed statistics and stereotypes against minorities in relation to the internet. Such as calling myspace “ghetto” only for the reason that young african american girls are using it, and how less likely minorities are to purchase things like smart phones. Also, we see popular trending topics on twitter that are geared towards segreating groups, and reinforcing stereotypes, which I have often seen myself.

With how far we’ve come in racism, and sexism, it’s incredibly troubling that people still have these separations. Personally, I don’t understand what race, or sex has to do with effect of how we use phones, and websites like twitter. We use our phones for entertainment. We use of phones to communicate. We shouldn’t be using phone user statistics as a way to divide and segregate groups.

These groups are what we make them, and what we define them. In my mind, perhaps the only segregation that we can make for something like technology is economic. Only because it effects what one can afford. However, I think that the digital divide is something that we could do without. I’m sure we all look forward to the day that no matter what race, or gender we are, we can all enjoy the same products, and the same opportunities.

I started blogging at a surprisingly young age. From submitting different types of short stories, to poetry to various different websites, I was always blogging. However, it was always for myself. So when I started blogging for an audience, I really didn’t understand tagging. And sometimes, I don’t even understand it to this day.

On my personal, health/gluten free blog, my number one SEO search is “Albanian Boyfriend”. Regardless of the fact that my blog has nothing to do with anything about Albanian boyfriends other than I have one myself. It makes me wonder, what I’m doing wrong.

Even though I’m not good with it myself, tagging is really the reason why I do or do not enjoy a website. The ease of being able to find something is key in making something user friendly. On all of the blogs that I enjoy, the bloggers always organize topics like “recipes” or “exercise” with the correct tagging. I’m always able to find exactly where I’m going, and I always come back again. And the same goes for all other visitors.

Even though blogging is newer media, and technology it still follows the basic business model of pleasing the customer by having a well oiled tagging system. After talking about it in class, I really understand that if I want to be successful in the blogosphere, I need to properly tag my blog, so my biggest SEO search won’t be something that my blog isn’t about.

My boyfriend often laughs at me with how much of an internet junkie I am. Since he’s an Albanian immigrant, who’s only been here two years, he hasn’t quite caught on to where the rest of us Americans with our obsession of the internet. Really I don’t think that we realize how much the internet has forced its way into our psyche, as well as google.

My own personal blog, is a food and health blog. My top SEO search of all time is “Albanian boyfriend”, because of my mentioning of him I assume. However, it’s misleading really. When people google, “Albanian boyfriend” they find a food blog. Wether it’s my own SEO missteps, or googles POV, it’s misleading. Personally, what I do to control googles POV on my own web content, is to be more specific and really use the correct key words and tags. When I’m looking for other web content, I try to narrow my own search, and look past the first few pages that google provides… because that’s generally where you’re going to find the weird stuff.

I feel that google should be in charge of it’s own regulating, since there really isn’t an internet police. They should be keeping tabs on their own filters and the tags that they provide. They should be looking at keywords, and searches and their results to find if they’re misleading. Such as when a American teen thinks that her perspective Albanian boyfriend will repeat what we saw in the movie Taken, she shouldn’t have to find my food blog.

This should be a somewhat foreseeable task. Google is not the only one of it’s kind (there’s still Bing, Yahoo, etc). However, Google is the main source, and if they want to stay that way in a market that is constantly changing, I think that they should impliment something to create a more navigable internet. I think it’s plausible, and would be totally ideal for both parties (google, and the public).

I’m pretty much tethered to my computer from the first minute I wake up. So after I go ahead and update my personal blog, I check my email on the yahoo homepage. Since I don’t want to wake my roommate with the TV, this is also where I get my news. I only really skim through pre-filtered headlines. The Amanda Knox media coverage caught my eye, and I found the headline to be pretty un-biased, and straight forward, which was very surprsing considering how bias this whole case had been. It was pretty refreshing.

Next, I went over to facebook and followed the daily routine of notifications, new-feeds, birthdays, messages, and so on and so forth. All that good facebook stuff. Also on a daily basis I notice the ads that appear on facebook. At first, I didn’t ever really realize how filtered these ads really were. I thought they were purely coincidental. But now that I know the truth, it’s almost humorous to test it out. Generally I have clothing ad’s, and random food items. So I decided to go on some facebook rant about my cat on my friends wall, and presto! My ads were filled with cats. It’s crazy to think how much facebook is really in our head on that one.

A filter where they are not so much in our head is the new newsfeed. They’re definitely trying to filter it to further help their ads, but it’s not really working… or for me at least.

This exercise showed me a little bit of what I already knew, but I got to emphasize and focus on it, and have some fun with kitty ads. Good show.

Yahoo:

• Homepage

Facebook:

• Notifications
• Newsfeed
• Birthdays
• Messages

Tumblr:

• Dashboard

WordPress:

• My own blog
• Itty bitty bits of balance
• Surviving Candyland
• Good for me Girl

When I heard about this assignment in class, I thought it was going to really test my attention span. Normally, when I’m doing homework or something else that I should be giving my undivided attention to, I have the TV on while simultaneously texting, and having my laptop out with several different links to it. So I thought that this would be a real test to see how I could really work with or without these distractions. Or if I could even get rid of these distractions in the first place.

For my high distraction post, I chose I post on Australian tree frogs. Pretty random, I know. I kept the TV on, was on the phone with my boyfriend, and was periodically checking facebook, twitter, and tumblr. This is pretty standard for me on a day to day basis, so I thought my summary would be pretty decent. It wasn’t bad… but it wasn’t good. It had consisted of just little bits of information that I basically regurgitated right from the wiki into my summary. It didn’t flow. The entire thing was very choppy and extremely boring to read back. It didn’t surprise me though, because I really did have a lot of distractions.

For my low distraction post, I wanted to chose something a little bit more interesting. I was ecstatic when I saw the post about the Rugrats Chanukah special. Growing up in the 90’s in a long island, jewish household, this special was the highlight of the entire season of winter for me. Without the distractions I was really about to read it thoroughly and reminisce on what it was like. And it was totally just as awesome as I remember it. When I read it back, my summary was totally coherent and it really did flow well.

After doing this assignment I think I really need to take it to heart and stop having so many distractions. I also need to start watching Rugrats again….

A summary of the wikipedia page- “A Rugrats Chanukah”

On this popular 90’s cartoon, the Chanukah special features Grandma Minka reading the story of Chanukah to the babies. They start to let their imaginations run wild (as they always did) and begin to imagine themselves being in the story, while Tommy as Judah. Later they leave to go to Grandpa Boris’ Chanukah play at their synagogue where Boris’ rival, Shlomo is playing the King. The babies believe that he really is the king, and they dub him “The Meany of Chanukah”. They are put in the synogogue’s nursery during the play, but manage to escape in order to save Grandpa from “The Meany of Chanukah”.

On stage, Boris and Shlomo get into a altercation and begin to fight backstage. Shlomo tells Boris that his wife died before they were able to have children, which makes Boris feel empathy for him.

The babies bump into them backstage, breaking Angelicas TV which causes her to have a fit. Shlomo tries to calm them down to no avail. Tommy then hands him the book that Grandma Minka was reading them earlier of the story of Chanukah which he reads to them so they understand the meaning of Chanukah.

A brief summary on the wikipedia page Australian Green Tree Frog-

The Australian Green Tree Frog is native to Australia and New Guinea, but has also been introduced to the US and New Zealand. This frog is larger than other American tree frogs, and has a life span of 16 years. They are not harmful to people, and are often found near homes on windows or even inside a home to eat insects. They are also one of the most common exotic pets, since they serve no risk to human health of safety. The only issue with keeping them as a pet, is over feeding. The frog will easily overeat and become obese.

They are nocturnal, and usually find a cool, dark place to hide during the day time. They mostly eat spiders, and other insects. Their natural predators are snakes and birds, but they are also prey to cats and dogs since they are often around humans. However, they are not at all in danger of becoming extinct.