Me & My MacBook, Part II - an Ode to My Dell

So earlier I wrote about my new MacBook. It was fun and all, playing with this cute little laptop with its shiny aluminum case, but it wasn't the same. I love my desktop. Or should I say loved? It crashed yesterday, leaving this hallow, empty sadness somewhere deep inside my soul.

We had a good run. Almost 4 years of constant, collegiate use. I would leave it on for weeks at a time, never letting it cool down. I would run iTunes on mute 24/7. I was awful at updating my virus protection, always letting it get out of date. I would get impatient and hit ctrl + alt + del 47 times in quick succession. I loaded up my hard drive with illegally downloaded movies and songs.

But I was also nice to my computer. I would open it up once a semester and blow out the inside dust with canned air. I would sings songs to it (mostly while just singing along to iTunes). I would wipe down it's large monitor screen with those expensive screen wipes from Office Depot. When it did something particularly trying, like converting 400 pages worth of search results from LexisNexis, I would pat it gently and say, "Well done, computer, well done."

All of this maudlin rambling might be a bit overdone. My computer engineering friend says it just needs some internal parts replaced, specifically the RAM. No big deal, according to him

Luckily for me, when my computer went kaputt, I had this little MacBook on hold (what I'm typing this on now). Not everyone has the money or the need for two computers, so it's furtuitous I had a second one. It has, however, brought the reality to light that I need to become better acquainted with my MacBook. I've had it for 4 months, and we're still getting to know each other. I've barely explored all the amazing things I can do with a Mac, mostly settling for portable email checking with my shiny laptop.

This episode has made me realize how dependent I am on my computer, whether in PC or Mac form. While this is a crutch, it also makes my life a lot easier being instantly connected to everything. This summer, since I'll be wandering around Europe, I'm going to see if I can start breaking myself free of my computer. Maybe only checking email 5 times a day, as opposed to every minute, with Gmail's automatic inbox refresher. I'm sure once I get back stateside, I will again be chained to my computer. But I think I'm okay with that.

Track that Swine!

So, apparently, we're all going to die. Not from Anthrax, not from Avian Flu, not from Mad Cow Disease, but from Swine flu. The new flu trend sweeping nation... and Mexico.

As my great-grandmother said to me yesterday, "I lived through the Spanish Influenza of 1918. No pigs are going to scare me." Thanks granny, that was great.

If, however, you are unlike my granny and are less concerned about Spanish flu and more concerned about Swine flu, we can help.

Inspired by Google's flu tracker that appears every winter to track cases of the flu around the country, Swine flu trackers have started to emerge. Individuals can report suspected cases or confirmed cases to keep the world in the know.

The CDC has also created its own emergency page to keep people updated about the latest porcine developments.

While all this newfangled technology does make it easier to track and possibly contain pandemics, it also makes the world a lot more paranoid. Since we can watch every case as its diagnosed, we sensationalize the news ourselves, no Hearst or Pulitzer necessary. Such an intense focus on one problem creates epidemic fear.

For the most part, however, I think these trackers are amazing ways of not only informing the world about new developments, but informing medical workers. It lets agencies like the Red Cross know where situations are the worst to provide help as soon as possible.

@Ashton Kutcher... kill me now

If you haven't already figured it out, I'm not a fan of Twitter. I just don't get it. Yes, it is funny to follow Shaq's rambling, nonsense Twitter, and Lance Armstrong posts cool pictures of cycling on his Twitter, but for the most part, I'm not quite obsessed with Twitter.

But do you know who is? Ashton Kutcher!

That idiot kid from That 70s Show who hasn't been in a decent movie in recent memory, much less any movie. What does this kid do for a living anyway? He must just mooch off Demi Moore.

Ashton has been spending his time trying to become the first Twitter user to amass 1,000,000 followers. No, not @CNN or @NYTimes or @Something worthwhile to society, but Ashton Kutcher. I was starting to warm up to Twitter, but not anymore. No more love for Twitter, now that it's obvious its users are more interested in what Ashton Kutcher had for dinner than the European Summit in Prague.

I was warming up to Twitter because Asher Epstein, the managing director for the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, provided insight to some useful Twitter functions. For example, people in a movie theatre could tweet their location, and say if there are seats left. People in traffic could tweet accident reports (obviously not while driving, since that would just add to the accident toll). Though not being used for this purpose at the moment, Twitter had potential according to Asher Epstein. And I believed Asher Epstein.

This belief is now shattered, since Ashton Kutcher is now the most influential person on Twitter. Excuse me while I lament to future of society.

Susan Boyle... no relation

I'll admit, I saw the Susan Boyle video pretty early on. With Facebook, Twitter and away messages, it's easier for those of us of a younger age group to share things and encourage others to take a look.

I knew the Susan Boyle video had gone crazy when my dad sent the family an email with a link to the YouTube video. It didn't take long for the video to get over 7 million hits, which I'm sure will keep growing. Susan Boyle has appeared on Larry King Live, various innocuous morning news programs, and even on E!.

Not only was Susan Boyle famous for her voice, but she gained notoriety for her somewhat frumpy appearance and quirky personality. As Carlos Mencia cynically but somewhat correctly remarked, if Susan Boyle were beautiful, she would have been discovered years ago.

Maybe the rest of the world was a little late in catching on to Susan Boyle, but we did. The ability to share these uplifting moments almost exactly as they happen has made her a superstar. For most of us, YouTube is just a place to watch funny videos to waste time browsing. But for someone like Susan Boyle, YouTube changed her life. This definitely wouldn't have happened 10 or even 5 years ago.

Google Wants All the Books

Beyond dominating email, searches, advertisements, blogs (this one included) and taking out newspapers nationwide, Google now wants all the books.

Google wants to scan a copy of every book every written in every language wor

Image via CrunchBase

ld wide. Sound crazy... yes. Is it possible... maybe. Google wants to create a digital bookstore where every book can be accessed electronically anywhere in the world via internet.

Since some of these books are legally copyrighted, Google has offered to give authors a sort of down payment for the rights to their material. Google would also charge users a set fee to access copyrighted material and would receive a portion of that fee, similar to royalties.

Though the scope of scanning all the books is massive, the craziest part is that Google has attempted to contact every author worldwide to gain permission to scan the material. Google has a direct-mail campaign to reach copyright owners. Google has created a Web site about the settlement in 36 languages, and are spending about $7 million in advertising in traditional media outlets worldwide to notify people.

According to the New York Times, this is "among the largest print legal-notice campaigns in history."

So

what happens if Google actually succeeds. First, it would take a lot of time to hear back from authors. Second, even if Google did get permission to scan every book, there's the actual physical process of scanning books. Just imagine the storage space and organization necessary to keep track of everything. It's mind blowing.

Also, what happens to your local library or Amazon.com when you can get any book on the internet, either for free or for a modest fee? On the bright side, imagine studying a text or foreign language, and being able to read it in its original form. The academic research element would be amazing.

The scope of the project, however, is so large with so many complex legal issues, it probably won't happen any time soon.

But as one article said, scope has never stopped Google from attempting things before.

The eventual death of social media

So I went to an interesting lecture on campus the other day with speaker Hooman Radfar, a leader of widget development. His whole poin

Image via CrunchBase

t was that Facebook has passed its peak, and in the next decade will become obsolete.

What?! I don't understand?! No more Facebook?!?! This guy must be crazy?!?!!?!?

Crazy, I think not. Thinking outside the box, most definitely.

His main point was that Facebook does 100 different things - photos, status updates, birthday reminders, messages and so on and so forth. Facebook only has 24 hours in a day to devote to everything is does. A sight that focuses solely on photos, for example, should in theory create a more user-friendly interface that more people would use and enjoy. Flickr could fill this need, if Flickr weren't awful. As more people become Internet savvy, they will move away from the convience of Facebook for better applications.

Radfar said the cracks in Facebook were starting to show, especially when it comes to status updates. Facebook clearly tried to imitate the Twitter phenomenon but having regular updates, as opposed to an away message-type status. Twitter is gaining members faster than the site can handle, literally, and more people are using Twitter, instead of Facebook, to let their peeps know what is up.

Radfar last main point about the eventual death of Facebook is that somewhere down the line, people a

Image via CrunchBase

re going to realize how creepy it is Facebook has all this information on us, and we're going to want out. This sort of happened a few weeks ago when Facebook said it got to keep everything we put on the site, and people formed these protest groups and circulated Internet petitions. Whether we accept it or not now, Facebook has immense power with such a large user base. One day, we're going to freak out and not want this anymore, and we'll leave Facebook faster than the state tries to stop all funding to our University.

New Media & Porn - A match made in adult heaven

This semester, I'm enrolled in a human sexuality course, taught by Dr. Robin Sawyer. Tuesday morning, we started our unit on pornography by looking at the history of porn and legal battles involving porn. We also watched one Dateline piece and one 60 Minutes piece on recent issues stemming from the porn industry.

One piece was about the seizure and eventual banning of the 1979 movie The Tin Drum in Oklahoma City. Go read about it. It's terrifying on so many different levels.

We also watched a 60 Minutes piece from 2004 on the evolving porn industry, Porn in the U.S.A, and how it has become more mainstream and has entered into our culture. One point made in this piece I had never thought of before is how new technologies have fueled porn, and how porn has fueled new technologies.

The piece explains:

Adult entertainment is so lucrative and profitable that it's become part of the mainstream culture -- readily available, easily accessible, and all but impossible to legislate away. How did it happen? It began 25 years ago with a brand new household appliance: the video cassette recorder.

Paul Fishbein, the founder and president of Adult Video News, the industry's trade publication, further explains this relationship between technologies and porn.

"Most people had never seen an adult movie, because they had to go out in public, to a theater, to see it. I mean, sex is a very private thing. So, now that you can watch it in the privacy of your own home, nobody has to know. And I think that's what drove the VCR. And I think, to a degree, it's what drove a lot of people to get on the Internet."

The piece continues:

In fact, pornography has helped drive early sales and the development of most new entertainment technologies for the past 25 years - providing software for the latest gadgets, and a reason to buy them. And usually the first people who do are affluent young men who like porn. Type the word "sex" into an Internet search engine like Google and you will get 180 million hits. [This number is now 751 million.] For years, adult sites were the only ones to turn a profit. They have pioneered and helped to develop numerous technological breakthroughs from online payment methods to streaming video.

Personally, I love new technologies. I love my internet, my cell phone, my DVD player and my former VCR. It made me feel slightly uncomfortable when I started thinking about the massive role porn played in the creation and evolution of these technologies. Then I though, "Meh, no big deal." If the porn industry is responsible for giving me streaming video and PayPal, then here's to the porn industry.