Privateering

It’s been almost a month since the shutting down of the popular file-sharing and streaming-vid site “stage6,” as mentioned in this techcrunch blurb.  It was supposed to be a huge blow to the piracy network online.  Heh heh, yeah right.  They couldn’t defeat the Hydra if they tried–I’ve seen many more similar sites rise up in just the past week.

Web 2.0 has the idea in our heads that this content should be free–especially when we would have watched said content except for some business or obligation that came up.  Merely removing the one site did nothing as many people rushed to fill the gap left in the availability dept. of free media.

CNN’s youtube

CNN, never one to allow itself to be too far behind in the trends, has decided to tap into the citizen journalism realm with a posting site called “iReport.”  (BTW, Mac should sew for the name–we all know that they have the market cornered on “i”-franchises).

Anyways, the site–as defined by this recent update–will allow users to post videos, photos, and audio files.  I guess it’s a sign of the times.  These news businesses have to be very sensitive to the public trends in news gathering–or else, they might get left behind (as newspapers are).  It will be interesting to see how iReport ends up.  I wonder how serious users will be when posting  to the site.

Florida? Election Problems? NO WAY…

You just have to laugh.

It seems The University of Florida has a contraversy concerning student elections, as I read in this Wired article.   Apparently, students will sue because online voting wasn’t allowed.  The U of F supreme court ruled the online voting unconstitutional since online voting could facilitate bully-voting and peer pressure.

I never really thought of that as a problem until reading the article–especially since we have online voting at Miami.  Of course, here, few really care about student gov. elections so I doubt that much coercion of voting occurs on our campus.

The electronics stores are dying

Oh CompUSA customer service man, I do loathe you.  Circuit City electronics customer service person with the limp legs and glazed eyes, you aren’t so helpful either.  Anyone noticed how some of the electronics stores are starting to fall on bad times?  I’d noticed it in the back of my mind, but I hadn’t put my finger on the idea until I read this article.  There’s something cute about this little pbs site I found, it’s very human.

Anyways, this article talks about how these stores are failing for various reasons: online shopping, bad customer service, etc…  Honestly, shopping on the web is better, but I think many stores will continue to stick around until everyone is either more comfortable with online shopping, or all the stores have split into the little specialized shops that everyone loves (Gamestop, Coconuts, The city).  Giving you credit card online is still risky, and getting stuff by mail can take a while, if it gets to you at all.  In a big electronic store, you walk right out of there with the item, after paying with cash if you wish.  As stated before, these big stores come with their own evils…

Then again we can always just go to Walmart–at least there, the prices are lower and we don’t have high expectations for the customer service, so we won’t be upset if  someone isn’t exactly up-to-date and informed about the product we are considering purchasing.

Ick, Capitalism

Everytime I hear about some big company acquiring some other one, I feel like the little baby that was just force-fed the  gerber stringed-beens that are absolutely disgusting.  Ick, Capitalism.  WAAAAA!!!! 

According to this article that just came out today, Microsoft and Yahoo could become one.  I hate it when companies acquire and merge, stifling creativity and ideas and beauty.  Such a union could make some very ugly babies (by babies, I mean new programs and engines and stuff).  Where we once had 2 groups working hard to compete for our approval, we now have a larger, lazier company that is more secure in it’s economic position.  Monopolistic security for a company is bad.

2 trillion SMS predicted for 2008

Wow, if text message were dollars, this would equal the amount of money predicted to be spent on the war in Iraq!  Anyways, the article I found is about the 2008 report on Global Mobile services.  It hones in on other key points like the new technology in GPS and mobile TV.

What happened to the good ole days when you could veg out on your couch and watch Rugrats or Darkwing Duck without feeling guilty about not multi-tasking.  Today, everything’s all about being on the go–this is bad news for guys like me.  It’s a scientific fact (Actually it isn’t, but I feel it should be) that guys are worse at multi-tasking than women are.  So as mobile tech. continues to emphasize that the days of “couch and chips” are over, guys like me will become less and less important in the world.

I can’t even have a conversation while texting someone else at the same time!!!  It seems this skill is supposed to be default now–my little sister texts like a fiend.  How dare I give my undivided attention to a person that I’m speaking with.

Youtube fame: web 2.0’s new brand of celebrities

Some videos on youtube are pretty sweet; some are not. Some vids are well-done, some are honestly a waste of time. The good ones can become mildly popular, as can bad ones–if there absolutely horrid–but the vids that reach viral status like spanish love song or the dancing one in this article become successful because they are just out there or ludicrous or a completely hilarious repackaging of some piece of pop culture. Here’s a local something I just heard of–it was so awkward to watch, it hurt.

All this web 2.0 is all about giving a chance to the unprofessional, the little guy, the odd ones. A whole cultural revolution (OMG, I sound like a political scientist. cue exaggerated arm movement), is occuring with these unprofessional streaming vid. It’s changing what we talk about, what we spend our time doing. I can’t begin to imagine how many times I’ve asked people what they’ve been up to all day, only to have them reply that they aren’t sure-they were youtubing random stuff and suddenly it was night, they were hungry, and they were ready to go to bed.

If you’ve read this entire post, here’s a little added treat. This guy was apparently some sort of famous jingle musician. You gotta love it when the celebrities of the past try to break out again on youtube.

Texting protected by 4th amendment privacy penumbra?

This is hilarious.  Some robbers used texting to communicate while they were stealing and then the cops pulled the records and busted them.  Just goes to show, nothing is perfectly safe.  I guess the ironic thing is these guys were smart enough to pull off these heists but not smart enough to realize the persistence of texting.

Of course, these guys are gonna try and pull the whole 4th amendment invasion of privacy BS to get the evidence against them stricken from the record (No one saw that one coming).  Whenever new technologies arise that can be searched by the po-po, we always get this same conflict: if the cops search it, does it count as illegal search and seizure.  When phones first began to be tapped, we got the katz decision, when we got thermal radar and other types of gadgets that can see behind the “expectation of privacy,” it had to be decided if if they qualified or not.  I guess it’s texting’s turn in this cycle of scapegoats.

Regardless of how this turns out, this is still pretty funny: a couple guys sitting back, all smug, betrayed by man’s new best friend–his cellular device.

Facebook, Privacy, Commonsense

Ok, so it seems everyone’s whining about the lack of privacy afforded by facebook.  It’s the internet, they need to get over it.  If there’s one thing that everyone should understand, it’s that nothing is sovereign or sacred once it’s been posted on the web.  There are all manners of ways that anyone can find my information and postings once I have chosen to post said information (*SHOCK*).

In this youtube vid, which is quite humorous I must say, we have a guy who loses his facebook account and instead, walks around the street, holding a profile pic and his information.  Anyone could look at his information.  Though it may not have been intended as such, this is a good metaphor for how insecure any information is on the internet–anyone with the desire only has to do little more than turn their head to look up a person.

In response to this unbelievable outrage (information on the internet!??? *GASP*) some organization has put out this video to scare people away from facebook.   Though I found this vid educational for some background info on facebook, I couldn’t help but laugh at it’s serious tone, trying to make facebook out to be so evil.