senior year

Well... it is that time of the year again. The time when baseball season is coming to a close a football season is starting up, which means a lot to some but for other it just means that it is time for school again. And I am back at Westminster for my senior year with a lot on my plate. I have been back in class for two days now so i have been able to experience all my classes and determine which classes im going to like and which ones i am going to dread. Out of all my classes i feel that my sports broadcasting class is going to be my most enjoyable, and beneficial since this semester ill be co-anchoring titan town sports on the County Line. Im looking to learn a lot this semester from this class which may help me find my sports annoucing job after i graduate.

final post

This class was a great learning experience for me. I realized some of the things that i do in CMC that i didnt really notice as much before. For example i starting thinking about whether or not I am the same person in CMC that i am in FtF. And I think for the most part I am, but i also came to realize that most people may have some kind of different persona in CMC then they do in real life based upon who they are talking to.
I had a couple of "oh wow" moments in this class, like watching Buffy (which was an oh wow moment for a different reason, but the biggest one was when we went over all of the different types of expressions that are used in CMC such as ;) or other faces such as that.
Im not sure whether of not i changed the way i communicate online, but i am more conscience of it.
I learned that CMC is everywhere and it is growing. CMC is only going to get larger in the future. With technology becoming more advanced everyday, there is no way to tell what tomorrow is going to bring to CMC.
To be honest this class is pretty much what i thought it would be. I was exactly sure what to expect, but I did think that we would be dealing a lot with things such as IM, and how people communicate online.
Overall I really enjoyed this class and felt that it opened me up to thinking about how I personally communicate online.

youve got mail

You've Got Mail is a good movie when trying to relate it to subjects in the class. There were times when i found myself trying to stay awake, mainly becuase it was a chick flick, but other then that it was pretty good.
One of the major things that i noticed was the difference in personallities from the Joe Fox that was online and the Joe Fox who was offline. This realy stuck out to me the most just becuase i think that this is one of the most common things that occurs online. When someone talks to someone else online, but then if they see that person in public, they communicate completly different. this was a different case though, becuase Kathleen knew who Joe Fox was becuase he was putting her out of buisness, however when she talked to him online, she had no idea that she was talking to the same person.
This just showed the pros and cons of CMC. The ability to be someone else is great for someone who mabye has trouble meeting other people. However on the other hand when talking to someone whom you are hoping to meet eventually, it could be hazardous to to prentend to be someone youre not just to trying a impress the other person.

Ipod

I have determined that this post is going to have nothing to do with Electronic Communications, but it is an attempt to save my fellow classmates. I was hanging out in my room downloading some music when i pop up came asking me if i wanted to upgrade to the newest ITunes. So of corse i said yes, after the upgrade i then discovered that something was wrong with my Ipod the next day. I couldnt get anything to come up on my Ipod except this flashing battery icon and a picture of a frowning Ipod.
So i went to the Apple website and tried going through all the trouble shooting options hoping that this could be fixed. After spending hours plugging away i began to realize that my attemp was hopeless. No matter how i plug my Ipod in, no computer will recognize that it is there.
Now i have to send my Ipod to the Apple company in hopes that they can fix it or send me a new Ipod. Becuase i got my Ipod from Apple i was given a one-year warrenty which is still in effect.
So hopefully everyone reads this and will not fall victim to the ITunes update.

avatar

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.