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 I was awful at updating my virus protection, always letting it get out of date.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.

Hey Look, New Facebook

So new Facebook launched today. Every time Mark Zuckerberg comes out with a new iteration, I care a little less about Facebook. I miss the good ole days, where you had to be in college. I think I have a John Kellogg opinion when it comes to Facebook: it's a necessary evil.

I'm about to graduate, and hopefully enter the workforce, so I think my use of Facebook will definitely be curttailed, but I'll still have to use it. So many of my friends, relatives and other contacts are on Facebook, it's one of the only options when it comes to staying in touch with a lot of these people. Like I said, necessary evil.

Image via Wikipedia

Hey, at least it's better than Twitter!

Adding Technology to Admissions

Gone are the days of checking the mailbox everyday in the Spring, hoping for a big, thick envelope from your first choice school. No more scheduling tours with the university's visitor's center, or trying to find current students to talk to over the phone to answer your questions. No more visiting the local Lion's or Rotary Club to ask about scholarships.

The college admittance process of our parents is gone....forever.

Now, colleges and universities are incorporating new technologies to make the process as easy as ever for potential students. Steps include notification of acceptance online, about two weeks faster than letters traditionally sent out through the mail. Scholarship information is also available online, making it even easier for students to find potential sources of money for college.

Beyond notification, admitted students are encouraged to contact current students online. Maryland, on March 9 and 10, held online chats for admitted students. Different programs throughout the university hosted chat rooms where high school seniors could ask questions of current students. It's a more casual way for students to have their questions answered.

Potential students also receive phone calls, emails and even texts from current students. Universities are getting more competitive when it comes to recruiting better students, and are using technology to literally inundate a prospective student with all the reasons why this university is the best.

Maryland has even talked about ceasing the process of sending letters of acceptance to save postal fees and paper. Maybe in 5 years, students will eagerly await that big, thick email in the Spring.

Me & My MacBook

To be perfectly honest, I love my Dell desktop. It's this big, honking massive computer, but it can do anything I throw its way. I also like the stability of always being able to complete my work in one place. It makes me more productive. And part of me still looks at laptops like toys; I can't do serious work on a laptop. I can play a mean game of Text Twist, but I just can't do real work on a laptop.

When I studied abroad in France two years ago, I was forced to buy a laptop to take with me. Luckily, the French university system didn't require I do that much work, so I was able to get things done. At the same time, I kept my laptop in exactly the same place everyday, so I could have that stability I love so.

I'm heading abroad again after graduation, so the laptop was again necessary. This time, however, my mom had commandeered my former Dell laptop to use for her more and more extensive travels. This gave me the opportunity to join the cool crowd and buy a MacBook. I also got the Adobe Creative Suite, since I wanted to expand my web design and Photoshop skills.

Never having used a MacBook before, it is a transition that takes getting used to. I keep trying to right click and nothing happens! It is no where close to becoming my primary computer, since my desktop is still around and still awesome. I think over spring break I'm just going to have to force myself to use nothing but my MacBook for a week, so I can get totally comfortable with it.

Come June 1, when I'm in Salzburg, Austria, it's going to be my only computer.

I don't understand Twitter

Apparently, as of February 2009, Twitter is the 3rd largest social networking site (after Facebook and MySpace) with around 6 million users. That's great and all, but to be honest, I don't understand Twitter!

A friend of mine recently created a Twitter and sent me a link, and this was my first exposure. I had heard people talking about Twitters, but I never cared enough to go investigate before now. It looks like all you do is write quick posts under 140 characters in length, either from your computer or from your mobile device. I don't understand how this is different from a blog. It just seems like a blog with shorter posts.

Twitters have been used for ongoing commentary-type situations, like during the President's recent State of the Nation. People were writing instant feedback to literally every sentence the President said on their Twitters. I guess that's cool.... I guess.

My friend, however, just uses his Twitter for "witty" observations about every day life, such as "Liberal arts means you have to dissect a grasshopper to be a journalist," or "Whoever decided that Al Gore should get a Nobel Prize before the guy that came up with pizza delivery obviously did not go to college."

It's mind blowing, earth shattering information, is it not. I think he should just get an imaginary friend to tell all these witticisms to, so the rest of the world doesn't have to suffer through them.

Distributed Computing aka Chris is a nerd

About 98% of what I know about computers, technology and all that other stuff, I've learned from my friend Chris. He's a computer engineering major who creates Facebook applications in his spare time. So when I was talking to him last week about the discussion we had in class on contributory creation of new technologies, he's like, "Yeah, it's SETI at home, but more interactive." And I said, "Uh, what???"

He then explained to me in slightly condescending terms that SETI is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - a government funded program of satellites north of San Francisco that constantly collect data from outer space, hoping to find some intelligent communication. It's a bunch of satellites that face the sky, so the picture to the right probably looks familiar.

After telling me the basics, he started to explain what SETI@home is. Essentially, starting in 1999, people could go to the SETI@home website and download a program. The program would send packets of unanalyzed information to your computer, and while your computer was in its screen saver mode, it would use your computer's power to sort through the information.

Image by Michael Heilemann via Flickr

The analyzed information was then sent back to a lab in Berkeley. It was a cheap way to have the computing power of tens of thousands of computers without having to purchase a painfully expensive super computer. As of January 29, 2008 the SETI@home achieved an average throughput of 387 TeraFLOPS, making it equivalent to the second fastest supercomputer on Earth.

If extra terrestrials aren't your thing, there are other options. Protein folding, LIGO, CERN and other projects are all looking to borrow your computing power. It's a way to contribute, without really doing much at all.

Books vs e-Books: A Family Holiday Debate.

It just wouldn't be the holidays without family, friends, good food, cheer and some sort of argument. This past holiday season, a contentious debate broke out between my father and oldest brother about the newest member of the family.... Kindle.

My father is an constant traveler for his work, and is weirdly proud of himself for owning one of the first Kindles ever sold on Amazon.com, since he purchased his on the release date back in November, 2007. He has gone through two more Kindles, since he tends to drop them a lot.

My brother, Brendan, is a constant reader (non-fiction, of course), and is weirdly proud of himself for having read all of the Pulitzer Prize nonfiction winners of the 20th Century. Far and away, his biggest monthly expense is books. This boy can't stop buying books. Despite the economic recession, I think he single-handedly keeps Amazon in business.

So my dad had this great idea: get Brendan a Kindle for Christmas. Even with the initial $230 you swallow for the purchase of the Kindle, it's actually more cost effective for the avid reader. Digital book downloads cost anywhere from $10-$20 while the actually hardcover of the same book costs anywhere between $20-$35. My dad thought by covering the biggest expense, he would saving my brother a lot of money and adding a lot of convenience.

Brendan feigned excitement at his gift, but it was obvious he wasn't pleased. The conversation went something like this:

Dad: But I thought you'd love a Kindle. You read so much you're running out of space on your bookshelves.

Brendan: But I like books. The actually, physical book. I write in margins, I make notes, I cross reference, I organize them on my shelf by theme.

Dad: Get with new technologies! Books will all be digital in 20 years! (This is also the man who used an ATM for the first time in 2005 and thought it was 'Fabulous!').

Everyone in the room not born during the Eisenhower administration: Eye roll.


Personally, I love books. Much like my oldest brother, I like to feel them and hold them and make little notes I'll find in 10 years when I read them again. Plus, you get to show off with the books you're reading. You can flash titles while you hold the book under your arm. "Oh, you're reading 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?'" asks someone sitting next to you in class. "Why yes, yes I am." No one can tell how erudite you are by the white cover of your Kindle.

Well, my brother is getting married the end of May. Hopefully, on this family event, we can keep technology debates out of it.

Welcome

With all these new technologies around us, media can truly be a wild and crazy place. Hopefully, as a class, we can start figuring it out and achieve a better understanding of how and why we use media. I'm looking forward to a fun, interesting and educational semester.