Yay! Finally done exams!!! Considering I only had two…but it feels so good to be done!! 
But now onto my take home exam for this course, which I think will be quite easy for me since we’ve been talked in depth about the info society all semester. Time to get down to business! And then it is officially summertime!
So I kinda touched on what I learned from the course (see Comm 2p26 blog post), but overall my impression of the course was good! I didn’t think it was going to be talking about social networking sites and blogging and bookmarking..and if I didn’t sign up for the course, I probably still would have thought it was something else! The course taught me that there is much more to just making an account on say, Facebook and putting information on it. There are ways that many people can take your information, or privacy issues that can go wrong. I have definately learned to be aware of what kind of information I put on Facebook and Twitter and stuff…especially since I’m getting older and preparing to look for a professional job. I will definately be using social bookmarking sites, I love em! As for blogging…I don’t know if I can keep up with writing blogs, but its fun to talk about different issues and stuff every now and then. Thanks Tracy for an awesome semester learning about the info society! Now to go work on my take home exam….ta ta!
These past few weeks have really got me thinking about privacy on the web..ever since talking about it in class. It’s kinda freaky to know that my information could possibly be in the hands of someone else, and I could have easily handed it over to them! I occasionally delete my ‘cookies’ online..because they contain information such as my user name and password, and sites I have visited before. I do this because well…I don’t want people to get my information. I’d rather not know WHO had my information, but it’s wayy worse to know what these people would DO with that info. Information like banking info is crucially important for me to know, and only me to know. I have online banking, which helps me to pay bills and transfer funds…and it saves paper by giving me an electronic statement instead of a paper one. I have my account number saved on my comp ONLY, with a few of the numbers replaced by stars. I only do this because I hate having to type in the long account number everytime, but I guess Id rather do that instead of having someone hack into my account. So now, I have to take into consideration everything I put onto my computer, or even public computers at school. I make sure with those comps at school I logout of Facebook and other sites, even though we log out of the computer fully. I just never know who has the technical skills to hack into certain websites and steal my information.
What I put on Facebook is something that I think about a lot. The most important privacy issue that is important to me are regarding employment purposes. I know that a lot of employers check out Facebook when scoping out potential employees…and if they see something they don’t think is appropriate, it can affect the employee largely. As I am getting older and looking for jobs after university, I have to be aware that companies are going to be looking at my profile and figuring out if I am the right candidate for the job. I share mostly everything on Facebook with people WITHIN my network.. I have definately tweeked my privacy settings for only friends to see. So if a random person in my network (Brock and Hamilton) wants to check out my profile, they can only see a limited piece of the profile. And that info is pretty much my picture and network only showing. The information I have is pretty basic… my birthday without the year, my favourite tv shows and movies, my interests, my schooling, my relationship status and so forth. I personally do not have any privacy stories but some of my friends put some really detailed stuff on their profiles…like what they are doing every second of the day, which I don’t really like.
The first thing I have come to realize is that whenever I need to find facts or information about something, I head straight to Google. Therefore, if someone was looking at my ‘Google log’, they’d think I am a crazy person lol. I have searches anywhere from finding information about my comm essays, to song lyrics, to health issues. Whenever I am sick (like I am now *tear*), I will google my symptoms and try and find out if I can diagnose myself. I am sure alot of people are like me, where they google random things all the time, so it is hard to make a ‘profile’ of someone just from their keywords. We were asked to do that in class, where some of the keywords were obvious..but then some were very misleading. Searching through keywords for third parties, such as businesses, are valuable because they can see what people are finding information about, and these businesses could take that information and formulate it into their business plans. Or maybe for police, if they need to find information that will help them solve a case. But like I said, it could be misleading and third parties could get totatlly skewed information.
I decided to Google my own name. (I’m sure people have done it before, and if not, youre in denial lol)…and the information I got back was shocking. The first one that came up was my actual Facebook profile! I immediately went to Facebook to make sure that did not come up on the Google search anymore. Other links I found once I Googled my name was other people with my last name, mostly from Barbados, which is where my last name orginiated from. I found it kind of intersting to see what came up when I googled my name…you guys should try it too!
I actually wasn’t sure what the ‘information society’ meant. But I am glad I registered for this course to learn more about the information world and different networking sites and so on. I actually did not know there are SO many social networking sites out there! Like I honestly thought it was Myspace and Facebook and that’s the end of that. I also do not mind blogging..I like the informal-ness of it and just writing about whatever I want. I like learning about the benefits and implications of the different units we talked about such as micro-blogging, social networking sites, social bookmarking, etc. I also learned that there are many ways of staying in touch with people…which is kinda creepy to think of actually. Like that one site where you can sign up with your cell phone and people can track down where you are, at any time! I guess it has some benefits though. I enjoy 2P26 because since I use the these applications and sites, I’m now aware of things that I did not know before. I also use Delicious and Twitter now — sites that I probably would not have signed up for if I wasn’t in Comm 2P26
So I posted my ‘online resume’ on Linkedin. It was pretty cool to make a profile and put my information on it. I personally never heard of this site before. I’ve heard of like monster.ca and workopolis.com (which I have posted my resume on). This site seems simple and easy to maintain and hopefully potential employers would find my profile. I still have a little bit of exploring to do.
For anyone who wants to check out my site, heres the link: http://www.linkedin.com/in/samapplewhaite
I liked how the site broke down my information and experiences into different sections, which was easy to see the profie. For the time being, I kept all of my information public…but I think I might play around with the settings. The information I put on wasn’t anything I wouldn’t want people seeing so I didn’t really mind. After exploring it more, I hope that this site will be useful for me.
First off, reading week is going by wayyy too fast! But as I enjoy my time off, I’m going to take a moment to talk about blogging and the different blogging sites out there.
Moblogging: for those people who take pictures and videos with their camera phones. Personally, I don’t use my camera phone as much as people who use this site do. But I guess it’s a good blogging site for when something happens spontaneously and you want to capture the moment right then and there. This sort of blogging reminds me of the show Gossip Girl – where people take pictures of their camera phone of people (without that person knowing) and sending it to Gossip Girl, who then puts it up on her blog for all to see and gossip about. I’m not sure if theres any privacy rules with moblogging, because it could get a little personal if people are taking photos and videos of people without their consent.
Videoblogging: there are sites for people with webcams who like to express their thoughts though video. For example, YouTube, people like to sit in front of their computers and rant about anything and everything.
Photoblogging: this type of blogging where people use strictly photos to blog. The website Flickr can be an example of this. I just came back from my trip to Jamaica and I made an account for my mom so she could show her coworkers and friends. She doesn’t and never wants to have Facebook, which I thought would be a good site to share your photos, so Flickr was the next best alternative.
Audioblogging: it was hard for me to find an example of audioblogging. The only one I could find is Hipcast, which was the example given in class. However, I guess Podcasts are an example of audioblogging, where people only want their voices heard and not their faces. This could be a good way of keeping yourself private, but if people recognize your voice, well then it doesn’t work as well.
I found two corporate blogs to compare, contrast and comment: Google and Facebook. Being the top two most largest web empires on the net, I thought it would be interesting to look at what the people behind the these companies had to say about it. Facebook’s blog mainly talked about things that were going on inside FB; what users have been talking about around the community. For example, the last blog was Mark Zuckerberg (creator of FB) talking about the users terms of agreements and how they were revising the terms. But they were getting alot of feedback from users so they decided to return to their previous terms of agreement. Google’s blog is a little bit more random and about whatever. They do talk about stuff around Google too, but not as much as Facebook’s. The last blog on Google was Tips for Website Success. They also talk about alot of technology and media stuff, which is cool for those technological savvy folk. These two corporate blogs are both successful and effective in their own way.. however, I would probably read Facebook’s blog more than Google’s; just because FB’s blogs are more interesting to me and since I use Facebook, I would want to know what’s going on and what the latest news is. It’s cool to know that the big people in these companies can take the time to talk to the user and the community (even though I’m sure they have writers sometimes to write their stuff for them)
Next, I looked at one of my fellow classmate’s blog. Sonya had a pretty straightforward blog…no additional posts except for the ones that we are instructed to do in class. There arent many posts to go off of, but she seems like a cool person, who loves scuba diving! lol.
So, I signed up for the social bookmarking site ‘Delicious’ and I find it very interesting. I played around with the site for a bit, typing in different tags to see what came up. Here are the sites I found and added: (1) Perez Hilton and Just Jared – two celebrity gossip web sites blogging about the lives and gossip of famous people. I regularly go to these web sites (Perez is my homepage!) because I am interested in entertainment news. (2) 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know – this can benefit anyone who has a social networking site. I am glad I found this article because I don’t want myself being all over the internet, where people can easily access my Facebook page. (3) 8 Useful Tips to Become Successful with Twitter – since I am still getting used to Twitter, reading these tips will help me in becoming more comfortable with Twitter. (4) That’s Not Cool – I found this site by typing in ‘privacy’ in the tag search. I found it cute and very useful. It has to do with harrassment and bullying over the Internet and cell phones. (5) Stumble Upon - BEST WEBSITE EVER! My roommate introduced me to this one. You hit the button ‘Stumble!’ at the top of the screen, and it sends you to another random website. I found some very interesting/funny/cool websites, pictures and videos. I would definately never know about these websites if I didn’t go to Stumble Upon. However, it is addicting and I know it’ll be my new procrastination tool! (6) Covert pdf to Word – I ’stumbled upon’ this one 
This website will be useful for when I need to find articles and need to highlight them in Word or something.
Next, I picked a tag and searched it in the three social bookmarking sites – Delicous, Diigo and Digg. I chose ‘fashion’ and found a slight difference in what I found among the three sites. I noticed that when searching through bookmarks, I get more articles as opposed to Google, where they are more websites and actual fashion magazine websites. My overall experience with Delicious was good. Before the lecture on social bookmarking sites, I had no clue what these bookmarking sites were, nor did I care. I noticed on some websites little bookmarking icons at the bottom of the page, but I had no idea what they were. Now I am glad I know about these sites that I will use from now on. These social bookmarking sites are beneficial because say if I’m at school, I can access my favourites on the school computer with ease as opposed to bookmarking websites in the ‘favourites’ section of Internet Explorer. Overall, Ienjoy social bookmarking sites and will continue to search for tags for entertainment and academic purposes.
When I did the social network activity, I found that most of my very close and somewhat close ties were friends – most I met here at Brock. I talk to them through all means of communication (like texting, MSN, face to face), but the majority of them time was through face to face and through MSN. Every one of my close ties were on Facebook…minus my mother. Some of her friends have Facebook but she refuses to get it..although I’ve seen pictures ‘tagged’ of her since I’m ‘Friends’ with her friends. Very close and somewhat close were hard to determine…I wasn’t sure who I considered very close and who I considered somewhat close. It took me a long time to think about who went where.
The Nexus application was interesting to look at. I noticed that theres two big sections..one for my Hamilton network; the other for my Brock network. Its weird how many people know each other that I’m friends with. And lets be honest, everyone lurks people on Facebook. I definately do it lol. It’s funny because I start with viewing one person’s profile, and then click onto someone else’s page and then someone elses. Once I know it, I’m on Facebook forever! I find social network sites to be important for people in the information society. When you need to find someone or talk to them, its easy to just type in their names and quickly search for them through Facebook, or Myspace. If you are interested in a certain issue or like certain movies, music, etc., you can easily join groups to talk with other people about similar interests. I find Facebook very useful, except very addicting. Its definately my number one procrastination tool. Businesses use these social networking sites to find their potential employees, to see if they can find anything out about them. All in all, I find social networking sites to be interesting, yet addiciting.
