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Class was a little unusual today with all the talk about Avatars and everything about them. I knew that certain people were involved in these kinds of things, but i only associated them with online gamers. I know right away i thought of my younger brother becuase as i have said in a previous blog, he plays World of Warcraft online and he has his little character that represents him.
However some of the things that i saw today blew my mind. I didnt realize how many different Avatars there were and how many different sites there were for all these people.
Now im all for people persuing happiness and finding that thing or person that makes them happy, but seriously, that a coulple hours, step outside of your house, call up your friends (assuming that you have any) and GO OUT!!! The only people you are going to meet in these sites are divorced moms and shut ins, and who really wants to be with that.
I understand that people get lonely and that is understandable, but instead of sitting around wallowing in your self pitty, take the time to go out and meet some new people, it isnt that difficult.

Myspace privacy

So i have been hearing a lot about Myspace recently and the problems with privacy as well as chilidren being stalked by "predators." So when looking into this issue i found an online article written by Marcy Zitz, in this article Marcy discusses the pros and cons of myspace. she says, "You may not have heard about the "secret" society called MySpace. Almost everyone in school has a MySpace page that lists everything about themselves and chances are your child has been encouraged to create one. T'weens are told how to bypass the rules so they can get a page even though they aren't old enough. They are a fun way to share information about yourself and post pictures but they can be dangerous for kids, including teens." this just being a breif discription about what myspace is. She goes on to say what things get posted on Myspace, the requirements for Myspace, and of corse the dangers about Myspace. This is what Marcy has to say on the dangers of Myspace, "Your child can easily post enough information about themselves to be abducted. An online predator looking at your child's page has enough information to arrive at your door or the playground that your child frequents. You must teach your child the dangers of posting too much information and you must follow up to make sure they aren't posting too much information.

Another problem is that children tend to post things that should never be put in print. They say things like they want to burn down the school or they want to kill so-and-so with not literally meaning it but threats like that could be taken seriously.

MySpace is for kids over 14 years of age. There is sexually explicit information on the site posted by other users and the profile questions that users create is geared towards adults." In this article she briefly talks about the parents and how they need to get more involved, but I think that there needs to be more to it then that. For example parents need to take time out of their day to simply talk to their kids, not entirely about Myspace, but also what is going on in their lives, what is going on at school, take interest in their extra corricular activities. Becuase a lot of the time of Myspace is used by kids to bitch and moan about all the things a wrong in their lives (whihc for the most part there normally isnt anything wrong in the first place). so parents need to not online talk to their kids about Myspace and about what they are posting on it but know their children, talk to them, eat dinner as a family, simple things like that.

nontouch screen touch screen

So when trying to come up with something to write about in my blog, i decided to look into the Iphone and see if there have been any new improvement made to the phone. When i looked at the website i found that the company is talking about taking the iphone from a touch screen to a non-touch screen touch screen. Confused yet? I was when i started reading about this new quality. Apple still isnt sure about applying the new technology but it was brought up becuase of all the smudges and finger prints that are going to be left on the iphone. Basically how the new screen would work is when someone moves their hand or finger infront of the screen to change what is displayed on the screen. For example to scroll down, the person would simply move their hand or finger in the direction they want to the screen to scroll. http://http://www.appleiphonereview.com/iphone-videos/non-touch-touchscreens-for-future-iphones/. This is link that will take you to the website where i found this information, it also has a video imbedded in it that shows off this new technology.
Apple says that this technology probably wont make it to the Iphone, at least not right away. But mabye after enough complaints about all the smudges and fingerprints that are going to show up in the screen of the Iphone.

online gaming

My little brother is a huge online gamer, myself personally i dont see the appeal. The big game out now seems to be World of War Craft, where you have a character that you use online and play with other individuals from anywhere in the world. That alone doesnt bother me, so you're playing a game online with other people, no harm there. However recently my brother has purchased a microphone which he has hooked up to the computer. With this microphone, he talks to his friends that are playing World of Warcraft with him online at the time. I suppose that it isnt enough to be able to communicate to online gamers by typing your commands and having them appear on the screen during gameplay. And the point of this blog isnt to put down my brother or others who play online games, to me it is just another display on how lazy we have become. When it gets to the point where kids dont even want to type responses, or commands but instead they have to use a microphone to communicate. It is also pretty amazing to see how far electronic communications have come in a matter of years. The fact that you can talk to someone anywhere in the world through your computer through a video game.

Cell Phone Bill

so i recieved my monthly cell phone bill today, and of corse once again i was about 40$ dollars over. Mainly for all the text messaging i do. This made me realize that i would much rather send text messages then actually talk on my phone, for several reasons. First of all, unless a call is extremely important, i really dont care who is calling me or what their message is. All i know is that they are calling me during peak hours which isnt helping my bill either, especially since i with Cell One, quite possibly the worst cell phone company ever. But since my parents pay for it i really have no say in well provider i get, my parents went with cell one for the "family plan," which to me is also stupid being as my parents are probably the people i talk to the least on my cell phone.
Any way i think that texting would not only save money, (if i had unlimited texting or corse) but also it would save me the headache of having to endure most of the stupid phone calls i take part in. When i looked further into this, i came across something, "Seattle based Jott will launch its new voice to text product sometime this week. It’s very simple - a user calls a specific phone number and leaves a voice message along with a recipient or recipients (an obvious use for Jott will be for people to leave themselves quick notes). The voice message will then be converted from voice into text and delivered via email or SMS. The recipient or recipients can choose between reading the text or listening to the original voice message."
This would be a huge time saver, i know personally i hate having to go through voice mail to get my messages it is just a huge pain.

wiki's / flaming

After class this week i really began thinking about how using a Wiki would be beneficial to every communications class. I'm not saying that every comm class should use a wiki all the time, but i think I would be good to do some experimenting with them. for example taking am assignment such a reading from the book and set up a wiki for the reading. then have everyone in the class ad their opinions to the reading. this would also be a lot easier for a professor to grade. instead of going through 20-30 individual blogs, every one's post would be on one web page. hopefully this will be something we see put in to effect in the near future just as an experiment and make sure to get the classes feedback about using Wiki's.

we also discussed flaming this week. when going through most of my classmates responses, i found many of them said that flaming would mostly occur in a group dynamic, which is also what i said. i have found this to be true from personal experiences. i have worked in a couple of groups I'm my almost three years in college where half the group would agree with one view while the other half would agree with the opposing point. and to me the most important thing to do in these situations is to make sure to hear everyone out. often times people hear their own idea and shut out the other options. several times i have changed my stand point when hearing someone else's view. patience is also keen, because when you jump the gun and totally ignore someone else's idea, you are going to come across problems and eventually to someone in the group getting aggressive. so keep your cool and keep an open mind