Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web (Paperback)
by Tara Calishain (Author)

Best wishes, Shary Flenniken

This blogging thing is making me feel a little bit like that.  The good part is the enthusiasm I feel at having such an easy publishing venue and seemingly ready audience.

The bad part is that feeding the information I consume every day into the blog-filter creates another creative step for me, and it is ultimately tiring and overwhelming when there are so many other projects competing for my time and productivity.

Every day, I get up, let the dogs (3) out, drink coffee, and read the newspaper or a library book for almost an hour.  This is the kind of time that most people take to relax in the evening, but I don’t do that. I work until I am dizzy and ready to drop.  It’s difficult to relax when the projects aren’t finished.

My current projects are homework, our research paper, an eight page website, writing and outreach (lots of meetings) for a district level emergency management plan for the city, writing and art for a series of color comic strips about the life of a nurse for Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing Magazine.  Then, you know, there’s dog walks and gardening, and the rest of real life. 

I wish I felt that what I am writing here is meaningful – but Saturday Night Live gags aren’t especially profound either, and at least I don’t have to compete with a conference room full of comedians.   Thanks, Shary Flenniken

The clutter will be separated by categories that are marked by tabs on top of each user’s home page.  For example, someone’s personal information such as, background and interests would be filed under an “info” tab, as well as “feeds”, “photos” and “programs” (applications).

Although Facebook managers are going to “tidy” up the website, and make the website more new-user-friendly, there will be people who are to protest against the new change.  Of course there are those dedicated users who love the way Facebook has been ever since the website opened up to the public, but in order to help build up on more new people, they need to make it more “newb-friendly”.

The Facebook developers have been helping with Facebook’s rapid growth since the start.  Even though this has become a benefit to the website, it also is one major reason why the website has become a mess and so cluttered.

In my opinion I’m glad Facebook is undergoing a change and clean up.  I have always wanted to start using Facebook because I would be able to get away from Myspace and the fact that there’s so many immature users.  I say that I have “always wanted”, because I never found Facebook to be able to catch me and MAKE me want to keep logging on.  This article is the exact reason why I wasn’t able to get too connected to Facebook from the start.  As stated in one of the previous paragraphs, the present users may not like the new change.

If you are a current user of Facebook, how do YOU feel about the whole change?

Sri Kumar (Karnataka state police chief), says that the “bootleggers” have been selling the new deadly made brew because the police have shut down authorized liquor shops through Karnataka because of voting for the state government.  The reason why liquor stores and bars are usually closed on voting days in India, is because it prevents the politicians from handing out free alcohol in order to win their votes.

The southern India police have arrested up to 1,500 people and have seized tainted liquor that is worth $1.8 million ever since the elections were announced in Karnataka last month.

The deaths that have occurred up to this point mainly resided in the more poor areas of the states, among more low class citizens.  It is said that locally made brew is usually spiked with pesticides or other chemicals like a banned chemical called “methyl alcohol” in order to make it both stronger and increase the amount to drink.

To me, I have no way of looking at this situation as either bad nor good.  There are no real people to blame for the deaths, but only the people who are making the alcohol..  This is an event that doesn’t surprise people around our world as much anymore.  I say this because there is so much more incredibly disastrous events and/or happenings nowadays.  As a reminder, this is what I think.

“Associated Press” in Los Angeles have posted “The urge to smoke is contagious, but quitting apparently is, too.”   It is said that the same team or researchers who found that obesity can be spread person to person also found a pattern close to that of smoking.  They say that if a friend of a smoker were to quit smoking, that person would more likely quit also.    These same researchers also found that smokers usually quit in groups, but those people who continue to smoke, find themselves “pushed to the edge of their social circles”.

There are findings from previous studies that show how peer influence plays a major role in a person’s decision to stop smoking, and there is evidence that this “buddy system” helps to change addictive behavior in general.  It is said that this buddy system also applies to alcoholism and weight loss among a group of people.

In the end, once a person quits, it is more likely that their friend or spouse will quit just as they do.  If this one person has influence over a couple of people, perhaps he will persuade or influence them to quit.  This will eventually work out as a chain-reaction, someone who influences a couple of people to quit, those people will influence the other people who are influenced by them.

I believe that this would be true, and that there is no doubt to this information.  I tend to want to quit doing things or to START doing things, once a group of my friends talk about doing it together.  Maybe people are different, what do you feel about this new study result?

I work for a local retail giant that prides itself (and rightly so) on customer service. At the beginning of every year new goals are lined out and set in motion. Each year the challenges are continually to improve on an existing strategies. The idea of reaching customers used to involve calling customers at hours when they could be reached, which was in the early afternoon/ early evening, his often resulted in interrupting families private and or dinner time.
Along with other considerations, and further ways to reach customers and gain new customers, the initiative was laid out…. to  gain  500,000 email addresses for the year 2008 to communicate sales info, special customer perks and events, as well as to keep the customer up to date with weekly “snapshots” of fashion trends.

The benefit of an email notification is two-fold for my company as well as the customer: far less man hours used with less intrusion in to people’s personal time, further reach through the “network” of the computer, and the ability to incorporate visual and audio effects into the message. I’m sure the retail industry is not alone in this approach, as this is a cost-effective, low risk-high reward, resource that has been underutilized. Personally, I receive the weekly emails just to keep up on trends and goings-on.

This may sound a little commercial, but it really is neat to see the effect of technology as part of business grow from idea to idea.

Sam

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24744662/

The websites mentioned in this article include sites that match up people with disabilities, medical conditions such as Crohn’s, STDS, and obesity. 

I think this is pretty cool, and it’s really very similar to the kinds of sites that bring together different religions or lifestyles.  It’s all about common experience!

Mayor Greg Nickels has just come out about a campaign about how people should think twice before they get into their car. Nickels is trying to convince people about trying to drive less and is even offering discounts to local businesses and local attractions. These discounts will be towards the people who carpool, bike, or even walk because all these ways can help the environment. He is also proposing charging people for plastic and paper bags at the grocery store. Places such as the Seattle Art Museum and the Woodland Park Zoo have even said they would discount the admission fee. Seattle residents who commit to reducing the driving will be eligible for a few different things. Some of them are getting a cash card of about $150, selling or donating a car could get you about $200. Although nothing is certain yet, I believe that this could possibly work. I definitely agree that instead of always getting plastic and paper bags you can purchase a cloth bag from the actual grocery stores. When you think about it, if they start charging you 20 cents per bag, it could definitely be worth it. My mother for example works for the mayor and she has now started to using cloth bags from a few different stores. The idea is great and having cloth bags could also make you more confident they won’t break on your way to the car. I hope people jump on this campaign because it can really benefit our environment and our lives in the long run.

This article caught my attention because my mother is a middle aged Asian American who has to walk to the bus stop by herself in the morning.  An African American man who is about 5 foot -10 is supposedly groping women and running away because of their screams. These incidents started happening since August 2006. It wasn’t until recently that they have more information about this man who seems to prey on teenagers to middle aged Asian and Asian American women. I first started hearing about it because he apparently finds his victims at bus stops and it made me fear for my mother’s safety. All that is known about this man is very little about his appearance and the type of car he drives. Although he hasn’t raped any of his victims, it’s still extremely serious because he supposedly groped about 22 women. A certain organization has put a warning out to women and have even provided self defense classes for women.When there was a meeting about these incidents, over 100 people attended. These type of people discuss me because they seem to enjoy scaring women from their normal daily activities. If this man is ever caught, what type of punishment do you think he deserves? Although he has not physically hurt these women, he has definitely scarred them emotionally. I hope women are always on the look out now because this man really needs to be caught. It’s sad that women have to be on pins and needles when their just going through their daily activities.

I thought this was a very interesting article that I found on the BBC website. In the article the author Bill Thompson takes a skeptical look at a book Written by David Levy called “Love+Sex with Robots”. In the book Levy expressed his belief that 20 to 50 years from now our interaction with machines will evolve and the possibility that humans will use robots as sexual partners is very real. Levy says there is no fundamental reason that humans cannot fall in love with a robot.  Thompson, while not totally disagreeing that humans could have an intimate relationship with a robot, counters that he does not think there is any way that technology will move along rapidly enough for this to happen with in Levy’s suggested time frame. In fact Thompson believes that this type of technology will forever be out of the human races hands and questions whether it is something people even want.

I think I agree with Thompson’s opinion. I just imagine attending a robot human wedding as Levy suggests could become common place in the future. I also do not believe that technology will be able to create a robot machine that would be life like enough that people would want to even entertain a sexual relationship with one. Not to get to graphic, but it seems like it would be very hard to replicate realistic human sex organs that would not appear machine like. I kind of grosses me out just writing about it. I guess if there is a market for blow up dolls then maybe their will be some people rich enough and desperate enough (most likely men) to pursue sex with robots. It is just not going to be me or many other people I know. What do you guys think about robot sex?