Android Operating System...

Today, the Android phone system is sky rocketing to the top of the market for operating systems.  While the iphone is still considered the most desirable operating system by 38% of the population, Android is a close second at 37%.  Paul Carton, the vice president of the research group, says that "All told, it’s a six-fold increase in consumer preference for the Google OS in a year’s time."  Such an increase is impressive for Android. 

See more information on it here…

Going along with the Android, iphone, debate, there is also a recent study out that shows that Android users use 100 MB more data than that of iphone users.  And compared to blackberry users, Android users use 400 MB more. And this is shown here...

To go along with data usage, here is my main point to this post.  A recent study done by Duke, Penn State, and Intel Labs found that more than 50% of the apps that Android users download, may be giving away personal information to other sources.  Personal information such as the phone number, sim card number and or the device ID.  Representatives from Android claim that they urge users to check what they are downloading.  While before downloading an app, a page does appear on the phone warning what information the app will be taking, many users find this disturbing.

Here’s my opinion.  I think that a more in depth description of where certain information is going is necessary.  I also think that information such as your phone number and Sim card number should not be allowed to be taken by any outside apps, as they are not necessary for the app to run on the phone.  Personal information should not be floating around the world like it is, and Android needs to tighten it’s grip on this open market.

Cell Phone "App" Augments Reality

What if real life and our virtual lives melded into one? Well, some researchers at Georgia Tech are working on exactly that. The new application, coming to iPhone shortly, can be customized and personalized to the individual to make a full-scale interactive experience for tourists and anyone using the program. What it does is use the camera from your cellphone to gather information about what you're looking at, your cellphone's visual display will then show both the camera view and information about what you're looking at, whether it's a website, blog, or just a title. Then you can interact with it in the virtual world.

read more...

You can see certain friends twitter updates from where they actually "left" them, website links to say arizona.edu just by looking toward the football stadium, and even what strangers want to publicly say about certain places. The researchers are making use of KML (the technology GoogleEarth uses for virtual mapping) and changing the way we interact with technology drastically. The applicability of this could grow substantially and make those with the application in a separate world with others who have it, leaving those of us without it in the dark ages.

read more about it!

See the Video Here!

I personally think it's wild how integrated people want our lives to become with technology. There's no doubt in my mind this will catch on and keep people busy for hours on end. It's hard to be bored anymore with all the technology forcing its way into our lives, people will come up with all kinds of crazy ways to use this new app from dating to dozing and everything in between.

Another website weighs in...

The Value of a Piece of Facebook

Back in July, during the Allen & Company's annual mogul-fest in the Idaho mountains, Mark Zuckerberg, more respectively the founder of Facebook donated $100 million challenge grant for the city's troubled schools. What a generous donation, right?

YES, $100 million is no small amount of money, but is Mark Zuckerberg really "rich" enough to pay for that? He is, but he has been defined as "paper-rich, cash-poor". He is not going to lay down his donation in cold hard cash, but Facebook shares.

Facebook has yet to go public in the stock market, so his stock is worth only as much as the "secondary market" perceives it to be, estimated at $33 billion or $76 a share. The secondary market is the only way to get your hands on a piece of Facebook, for now. The shares that have been distributed have come primarily by Employees who have sold their shares. Many companies, such as Elevation, Microsoft, Digital Sky Technologies, and many private investors, have found ways to get their hands on a piece of Facebook.

So the $100 million worth of Facebook shares Mark has donated to his new foundation Startup:Education, are worth nothing more than the "predicted value" of Facebook, based off the most recently sold share in the "secondary market". So the question is, how much is Facebook worth and how many shares will Zuckerberg have to give away to provide $100 million??? The amount of shares he may give to the Startup:Education program might actually by worth well over $100 million by the time they sell them.

Opinion: This article is very stock market oriented, but i found it interesting the price of Facebook and it's true value. We will know soon enough how much Facebook is really worth. I think this is a great opportunity for the public to invest in a company that is seemingly becoming larger than life.

This is the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/business/28sorkin.html

Some related sources:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/04/want-to-buy-facebook-shares-too-bad.html
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2010/06/28/elevation-partners-status-buying-facebook-stock/

Facebook Helps Sex Offender Find Victims

Rodney Bradford Alibi = FACEBOOK
Robert Nickson Sex Offender

Russell Goldman based his article "Facebook Status Read 'Engaged,' But Cops Called it Statutory Rape" on an alleged rapist and his ability to victimize young girls through the infamous Facebook. Robert Nickson Jr. a 22 year-old man claimed to have a relationship with a 14 year-old girl. Nickson and this young girl had met through a friend and had exchanged numbers, both had continually texted one another and were declaring their love and engagement through Facebook.
Not only had Robert Nickson declared his relationship with this young girl on Facebook but he had also found that the police were catching on to his alleged act. He messaged the young girl and told her it would be best to "lay low".
Robert Nickson had taken her to his home which he shared with his father and would have sexual relations with her multiple times, four to be exact. Not only did Nickson know he was doing wrong but the young girl did as well, both just figured their relationship would not go public and they would not get caught.
Once officials began to investigate their situation Nickson then began to really encourage they "lay low" to avoid getting caught.
In the video Facebook helps an alleged rapist meet his victim, the rapist is later found to have been charging this young girl for her body, not to mention his threats to erase her pictures and the sex video he made her do only if she would have sex with him again. His mother continues to fend for his innocence and will not show her face to the abc news cast while her son is now in prison on a $500,000 bond.
The idea that Facebook has been a piece of evidence for a wide variety of criminal acts is a bit intimidating. One usually uses Facebook to socialize with friends and family, it is the most common use of Facebook, although to think that there are crimes taking place on Facebook and the police are able to use Facebook as a source shows a completely different side to this so called social network we all rely on. For instance, a young girl was cleared of a crime thanks to their Alibi on Facebook, Rodney was updating his status on Facebook in his father’s computer 13 miles away from the robbery. Officials believe it is not "totally reliable" because they understand any individual can log in for someone else with their password.

Facebook Down!

On Thursday of last week, September 23rd, Facebook went offline for around two and a half hours. According to CNN.com, this outage was the longest in Facebook history, cause by a problem with the network's ability to fix an error. The CNN article explained, "On Facebook's blog for developers, a post Thursday had said the site was 'experiencing latency issues,' or a time delay, with its platform. In layman's terms, what Johnson described was a situation in which a problem popped up and lots of different parts of Facebook's system tried to fix it at the same time." This problem forced workers to shut down Facebook for millions of users.

With Facebook being offline, people needed to find a way to communicate that Facebook was offline. So instead of updating their Facebook status they tweeted. CNN reported on example, "Somebody needs to fix Facebook ASAP. I don't like having to tweet to show that I 'like' all the stories about it being down." A blog on MSNBC.com showcased more humorous and sarcastic tweets about the outage. One of my favorites from the blog was, "@kevinism: 'Facebook is down. Expect a huge spike of births in nine months.'"

It is scary to think that some people were so freaked out about Facebook being down for two hours. I don't even want to imagine how badly people would react (myself included) if it was for two days. I'm not going to lie, when Facebook was out I tweeted about it. It's sad that I have the inability to completely unplug myself from all social networks, but I think it's just the way our generation has grown up because I am obviously not alone. Another tweet from the MSNBC blog said, "@vvvCARLAvvv: 'Facebook was down for 4 hours & ppl are reacting as if its apocalypse. You can still go outside & suck in air (expletive deleted)! Jesus! Unplug for a sec.'" I think it's funny that this person would advise other people to unplug when they have clearly not.

Overall I think freaking out over Facebook being offline for two hours is a little ridiculous. However, I understand how people could feel disconnected. Facebook is something that I expect to always be there. I expect to be able to get on to Facebook when I want to procrastinate my homework, when I don't want to pay attention in class, or when I'm just bored. Facebook has become something people rely on, and that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Cyber crime turns into Nuclear Terror

From CNN.com comes a story about a particular computer virus, called Stuxnet, that is creating new headaches, and is being called “the first directed cyber weapon”. Computerworld.com reports that over 30,000 Iranian computes have been infected with the virus, with perhaps the most noteworthy machines to have been infected being some of those at the “Bushehr nuclear reactor” facility. The virus is so advanced in its behavior, that Infosecurity-magazine.com reports industry insiders feel it is the work of a “well-funded, highly skilled attack team”. The team behind it could even be backed by an unknown government. The directed focus of the virus—specifically how it seems to attack industry based machinery and systems, specifically searching for nuclear facilities, and then affecting the controls and valves of actual machinery by altering the computer code which controls them—has many rightfully worried, though Informationweek.com states Iranian officials have claimed no major damage has been done. Of course, major damage could still be done, as the virus has a tendency to reappear.

This virus obviously poses a real threat, for if it can target specific systems at a nuclear power plant in Iran, it can be designed to do the same thing on American soil. This type of thing truly brings home for me how the “virtual” world can cross over into the “real” world. Instead of worrying about hackers compromising my bank or credit card company information, I now get to worry about them causing real, physical, damage on a horrific scale. This is also the type of event which will prompt lawmakers to adopt measures such as the internet wiretapping Professor Weisband posted. Indeed, I feel that such wiretapping is inevitable, unfortunately, and that it will one day be common place for everything we do online to be scrutinized by big brother. Although, I must admit, if it prevents a nuclear catastrophe such as might be capable with the Stuxnet virus, then I’d be o.k. with it. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d be o.k. with it—because the thought of a computer virus being able to cause a nuclear disaster is terrifying to me.

ALERT! Please post links within the blog post!

Please see my comment to Ty Wheeler's blog on "Digital Learning."
I am reposting it here for convenience.

1. When links are at the end of the blog post, I am not sure the links provided are directly related to the article. There is no context for some of the links, so I'm not sure how if fits within the context of the article. The links have to be RELATED to the article.  One of the links should BE the article or initial source.
    
2. To embed the link in the post, highlight the text that you want to link to, click the "link" button, and paste in the URL. (See my previous example about the NYTimes article on wiretapping encrypted communication, or link to one of the blog rolls on this page to see how others do it.) You can always "test the link" before submitting it.  Also, take advantage of "previewing" before publishing.  (You can always re-edit, but it saves time to preview.)
    
3. Finally, this assignment requires that you be somewhat thoughtful about your opinions and comments for full credit.  Do not hedge.  Have an opinion and back it up.

Children and Facebook

The article, Is Facebook Safe For Kids?, describes the safety issues taken into account involving facebook. In 2006, when Facebook was opened to the general public, children over the age of 13 were allowed to create a profile. Four years later, statistics shows that children at the age of 10 are starting to create profiles when Facebook was targeted to college students.

Facebook has been taken measures to protect the privacy of its users by being able to limit who can see what and making it easy na daccesible to report inappropriate content. Although there are still many situations of children who have ben hurt mentally and physically by online predators who eventually meet with children in person thinking that the predator is someone their age.

Furthermore, there are many features that attract children and teenagers to Facebook including Farmville, games, etc.An interview with the Vice President of Facebook involved his thoughts about how the future of this independent company would be. This video was filmed in 2007 and shows what he thought the future and target market of Facebook would be. In addition, the author of the article claims that: “In the end, it doesn’t matter how safe Facebook claims its site is, there are still some bad people who can easily access the site and reach its users” (Mcfarlane).

My Opinion: It is ultimately up to parents to be responsible for their children in the sense that they should be educating their children about online predators and the danger behind the screen. Resources for parents include: Internet Safety for Kids, Parental Control and Online Child Protection, and Instructions for Parental Control

FBI Employees Cheated on Exam, U.S. 9/27/10

United States FBI agents were taking a test to make sure they understood the 2008 Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidemake , “The exam involved guidelines adopted in December 2008 for domestic FBI investigations and operations, rules that have been criticized by civil liberties groups.” Many people received items with study guides and answers for the test. It was an open book test where they could use items they have gathered, the only rules was they couldn’t speak or make communications with anyone else taking the test. Many of the employees finished the exam 70 minutes early for a 90 min test. On the test it had a question at the end asking “ to certify that they did not consult anyone while taking the test”. Many people who cheated clicked the box saying they received no help on the exam actaully recieved help of some sort. FBI employees are people who have to follow many different types of ethics, if they cheat on an exam, who really know what they really do behind the scenes.

Digital Age affecting young learners

Digital Age

The digital age is the definition of this generation. It is the progression in technology and how people use it to their advantage. It seems as if the progression of technology would be a good thing for everyone. Technology makes things efficient, easy and fun. So why would should anyone think that the digital age is a negative improvement? It could be because while technology is making business efficient for companies, it is depriving children in schools from their full potential to learn. Due to excessive use of video games, social networking and other technological devices and applications, it is believed that kids are unable to fully give their attention to school. Twenty years ago, there was nothing in class or at home like cell phones and video games that would lead to distraction. It was easier for kids to focus on school in and out of class because there was no such thing as facebook, Xbox, cell phones, gameboys, etc. It is a serious concern of how all this technology affects the young growing mind. In essence, with the improvement of technology today, the children of our future are questionable due to the depredation of their education.

My Opinion: I believe kids who are exposed to excessive amount of technology and digital media are in fact somewhat affected by it. However, I am not sure how so, and if it is a negative impaction on their ability to learn or if it actually induces brain power thus improving their education. Either way the technology does in fact affect the young minds of America whether it is negatively or positively.

Links:

http://www.id.iit.edu/635/

http://www.media-awareness.ca

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article3645034.ece

Image:

U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

In today's NewYork Times, Federal law enforcement and national security officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications (e.g., Blackberrys, Skype, social network sites like Facebook) to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

"The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally."  The FBI refers to it as "lawfully authorized intercepts" and it up to the communication providers to allow authorities access to plain text views of encrypted communications.

How we pay attention?

Here is a link to a YouTube video to test your ability to pay attention. How did you do?