Week 11 EOC: The future of the internet

When we look at the internet and where it is going it is probably an unknown quantity. I could make some kind of a prediction and that’s all it can be, a prediction. In 1970 an author by the name of Alvin Toffler wrote a book called “Future Shock”. In it he shares his interpretation of the future and what it might be.“he anticipated, long in advance, today’s computer revolution, as well as cloning, the fragmentation of the family, cable television, VCRs, satellites, customized products, the speed-up of daily life, niche markets, virtual agents and the rise of the "knowledge economy. “(http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/toffler/toff05.htm). He said that if technology increases to fast that society would suffer from what he called “Future Shock”. He said that people would be overwhelmed. If you take a look at his prediction you can see that he was limited quite a bit. I think that people have actually dealt with it quite well. People are not overwhelmed if anything I think that are next generation are growing up with too much data in their face. My nephews who are all under the age of 8 all have iPhones and know how to use them. But I fear that all of them could grow up with “attention deficit disorder”. “Now we not only shop, bank, work and meet people online; but we share what we are doing at any given moment (e.g. Twitter), and even keep statistics on daily minutia.”( http://sixrevisions.com/web-technology/6-predictions-for-the-future-of-the-internet/). But back to the internet, I think that with new technology like HTML and the improvement of the backbone from IPv4 to IPv6 more exciting things will be possible through the internet. Just think what it could do with education, it has already begun to transform the print industry.“You can buy books from Google and read them on your Android, iWhatever, e-reader, or the Web; authors and publishers can upload their own books, with or without DRM; and it’s all been expertly implemented.”( http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/18/google-ebooks/)

Week 10 EOC: 3 Things that scare or inspire

To scare or inspire that is the question. It really depense on whether you are out for good or bad. Or in other words is your intent is to create a product that is meant to help others or are you just going to create havoc. From the book “How the internet works” one topic I find to be quite scary. That topic is “War Driving”. Its sounds scary because of the fact that “War Drive Hacker” does not need to be even close to a open “WiFi “ network to capture the data that he needs to have heyday. But o tell you the truth this sounds like fun to me. Now don’t get me wrong I just want to try this not to do evil but to just to see if I could get it to work.
Another is the “Evil Twin”, where hackers finds a local coffee shop when it is at its busiest and create a duplicate SSID or “WiFi” to trick internet users to use instead of the coffee shops. Then of course they can collect all the data they need to get started. But the thing that I kind of want to go out and try is both. I think that that would be interesting. Of course this is only for academic purposes only.

Week 9 EOC: What is Cyber Monday?

Before we can talk about “Cyb-er Monday” we should first mention “Black Friday”. Black Friday is considered to by a lot people to another holiday, a holiday meant for shopping that is.“The Black Friday as we know it today (long lines of people outside stores at 5am or even midnight) didn't gain popularity until the end of the 20th Century. “(answers.com)(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Black_Friday_start_in_the_US#ixzz18Q7SGakr). After Thanksgiving, most Americans, storm the stores in pursuit of incredibly low prices that are typically good for only that morning. For example big chains like Wall-mart will offer deals on big screens TVs and other electronics for sometimes up 50-75% off. The crazy thing is that customers will line up the night before or early that morning to try and take advantage of these first come first serve bargains. Comscore.com reported on last December (2009) “...spending for the holiday season from November 1 through Christmas Eve. During this period, approximately $27 Billion was spent online, which represents an increase of 5 percent over the same period a year ago.”(http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/12/E-Commerce_Sales_Rise_by_5_Percent_to_Reach_27_Billion_for_the_2009_Holiday_Shopping_Season_through_Christmas_Eve).
This is pretty incredible for a holiday that was invented by the industry. But “Cyb-er Monday”, also known as “Black Monday” on the other hand is a pretty much the same thing but accomplished via the Internet. You would wonder why is it that after big shopping day like “Black Friday” would people still be shopping like that and especially online.“One theory suggests that people see items in the shopping malls over the weekend and wait until Monday to buy them online, where they can compare prices, avoid lines and/or take advantage of free shipping or other offers.”(answers.com)(http://www.answers.com/topic/cyber-monday). Or it might be some other reason.“Another theory states that people have faster Internet connections at work and, therefore, wait until then to make online purchases.”(answers.com)(http://www.answers.com/topic/cyber-monday). For what ever reason this day way to nuts and you find me out there. I’ll be home sleeping off my turkey hangover.

Week 7 EOC: The Scary Internet

Since the advent of the solid-state microprocessors our lives have become easier to manage. Through the use of computers, smart phones and the internet I think that we are starting to take things for granted. For example if I want to find a recipe that uses bacon, Google and other search engines can and do make the assumption that I am male. And then the next search that I do might include ads at the side that are meant for a man. That might be fine and dandy and can also be convenient. But the one thing that scares me the most about this is when anyone can use this same technology to find out if I am not home and then come over and rob me. Or a future employer might be able to have access to some of my past through pictures of me past out drunk at a party and then decide to not hire me because of that. The list goes on and on and can get even scarier.

Week 7 BOC: Privacy Issues on the Web

When it comes to my privacy and yours, I think that we are all screwed. This last week in the news the story about Google and their “street view” cars has resurfaced. As one of these vehicles drive down the street they would harvest any data off of anyone’s home network that was not secure. Not to mention what was captured by the cameras. “Google insists that the data sweeps were “unintentional” and that they were only viewed a very limited number of times.”(http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=1876720) The thing that I find interesting is that that is exactly what Google is in the business of?
Also Microsoft is guilty of doing the same thing. Microsoft just released their product “Kinect”. What it does is enables multiple video games participators to interact with their Xbox without the use of any controllers. It captures your movments via a special web cam that sits on top of your TV. The issue is that it sends pictures back to Microsoft. You can only imagine what they are doing with those pics, right! “Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE do not use any information captured by Kinect for advertising targeting purposes.”(Microsoft) We can only hope.

BOC week 7: How to Beatmix

Week 6 EOC: Video Challenge Tentative Plans

I think that for this new and exciting video challenge, I will need to produce something a lot of people are interested in. The first thought that comes to mind is something artsy. You know something with music that I created in my little, modest studio. I really like stop motion and I have seen some really interesting videos done in that style that I like. As a child, growing up I really liked these short films or videos that where done in stop motion on “Sesame Street” and then music placed on top. And as the beats or melodies played in the music the video responded to that sound, I guess you could say it’s kind of like a “Video Jock” does in a nightclub on video screens hung around the nightclub.

Week 6 BOC: There's an App for that!

After looking at many at many resources across the web, it is in fact true that there is an application that will allow you to check to see if you have a sexually transmitted disease. Doctors in the United Kingdom are developing the app. It will allow you to submit a sample of saliva or urine to a microchip. Plug it into your computer or smart phone and you get a diagnosis within minutes

This is after a brief journey across the internet looking for the other apps that were in question. Those being a “Ring-a-ding” app that just opens your default phone app. And also the nonexistence of an IQ app that I could find nowhere.

Week 5 Midterm: What is IPv6?

What is IPv6 and what does it do? When I think of the internet and its components, I think of a cluster of streets and neighborhoods. And every house that resides on those streets needs to have an address. IPv6 is much like each one of those distinct street addresses with maybe some slight differences. “Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer protocol that enables data communications over a packet switched network. Packet switching involves the sending and receiving of data in packets between two nodes in a network.”(http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-v6)

Also known as the backbone to the internet IPv6 is the newest version of the protocol. It is actually not widely used yet today and industry professionals are just now starting to get concerned about the limited number of distinct IP addresses that are still available. Before IPv6 and what we use more commonly today is IPv4. You might say “hey what about IPv5, what happened to that standard?”  IPv5 ended up being implemented by a lot of private industry like Apple, IBM and NeXT. Another reason that the industry is moving to IPv6 is it increased the number of bytes used in addressing from 4 bytes to 16 bytes. That can and will increase the available number of IP addresses for people and organizations to use. With all of the new devices and appliances now coming out on the market like smart phones, video game consoles, and new internet TVs the need for more distinct IP addresses is greater than ever. One bad thing to note about this unfortunate circumstance is that a lot of the internet’s routers and switches in both the home and throughout the rest of the web will need to be updated.

Week 5 Midterm: What is the octet?

When we talk about the word “Octet” it actually has several meanings. Of which there are octets in music, engineering and chemistry. But the one that I am talking about pertains to computing. The word’s root “octo” means eight. There are eight bits inside of an octet. So in a way you could say that an octet is the same as 8-bit and if you think about it a megabyte is also called a mega-octet. But the difference between a byte and octet is the number of digits in an octet is 8.“Computer networking standards almost exclusively use "octet". It is prominently used in Request for Comments (RFCs) published by the Internet Engineering Task Force.” (http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2060979) An octet commonly is used in a numeric value form, although it can be used in a variety of ways like hexadecimal, decimal, and other number systems. It can also be used as a string which uses only letters instead of numbers.“The OCTET STRING type is used to specify octets of binary or textual information. There is no limit to the maximum number of octets in a value of this type specified in SMI v1.”( http://www.webnms.com/net-snmp/help/developing_management_applications/datatypes/smi_datatypes/octetstring_datatype.html) Octets are use in across the internet and even on your home network. “Octets most commonly refers to any of the four bytes of an IPv4 address. In dotted-decimal notation, an IP address appears as follows - [ octet ] . [ octet ] . [ octet ] . [ octet ] “ (http://compnetworking.about.com/od/workingwithipaddresses/g/bldef_octet.htm) Each one of the octet in a IP address should and do add up to a total of 256, that being a number anywhere between 0 and 255. So as you can see this complicated use of a combination of numbers can provide many different possibilities.
You can actually identify, based upon the first or the last octet whether it represents a “Net” or a “Host/Node”. A “Net” is always contained in the first octete while a “Node/Host” is always contained in the last. So just by looking at computer or a device on the internet or network we kind of can tell what type of a system it is and what it does. As you can see this important when looking at “Class A” networks. “In the “classful” IP addressing scheme, a Class A network contains addresses for about 16 million network interfaces; a Class B about 65,000; and a Class C, 254.” (http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPAddressClassABandCNetworkandHostCapacities.htm)
If we take a look at other aspects of computing we can see pretty much the same thing, for instance, file compression. One popular form of file compression is MIME attachment.“A MIME attachment with the content type "application/octet-stream" is a binary file. Typically, it will be an application or a document that must be opened in an application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor.”( http://kb.iu.edu/data/agtj.html) In order for file compression to work both the sender and the receiver must use the same type of compression. The algorithms on both ends have to be the same meaning each octet in the algorithms should line up.

Week 4 EOC: The Deeper Meaning of the Movie Big

Imagine if one day that you worked at a toy manufacturing company designing toys.
But that you had something that helped you to think very differently than the rest of the people that you worked with. Lets just say that you where an adult one day that thought about all the things that bring most adults stress. You know things like how we are going to pay for things like the lights being on. And in the next moment you are magically changed in to a child and you think about everything in the opposite way. Like how the toys that you are to design can be more meaningful to the children that actually play with them.


Well welcome to the movie “Big” in which all the preliminary happens. In the movie “Big” Tom Hanks self promotes himself from doing data entry and eventually becomes VP of Product Development. As he is still a kid at heart, he fully understands the toys to be tested like most children will. There is a scene in the film where he is playing with a toy piano in the mall and fully understanding it like a child would play with it.


This is an example of deeper marketing research, Tom Hank’s character actually shows the big boss that he understands how most children interact with most toys.

Week 3 EOC: 3 Time Internet

There are many ways to connect to the World Wide Web these days. There are wired and wireless connections. Both of which are very valuable these days when it comes to connecting to the world and getting things done. When I think of my access to the Internet I think of my iPhone and my Mac. Apple has made it really easy for folks like me. At home or on my Mac it is through a wired connection either DSL or Cable. “DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a technology for bringing high- bandwidth information to homes and small businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines.” http://whatis.techtarget.com. I prefer Cable Internet. “There are a few limitations to cable Internet. If there are many subscribers browsing the Internet in your area, your speed may be reduced due to the capacity of the cable line.”eHow.com. Ya may be reduced is the operative word here. Where I live I hardly experience low bandwidth. 18mbs down, 6mbs up, I love it it works great for me!

When it comes to mobile Internet I would suggest two methods. One of which that I use is wireless on AT&T for the iPhone. Now this is great if you just only want to surf on your phone. What I prefer is another method by 4g wi-max via “Clear Wireless”. Through a Mobile wireless modem that fits in your pocket you can share your connection with up to 5 computers or WiFi enabled devices. “4G is the short name for fourth-generation wireless, the stage of broadband mobile communications that will supercede the third generation (3G)” searchmobilecomputing.com. Whatever method the method you choose all are great but wired will give you the fastest speed. And wireless will give you the most flexibility.

Week 2 EOC: Internet Privacy

“Nobody knows who I am as long as I don’t log In right?” (Ignorant Internet participator).
Come on, I know that you have thought that very same thing at some moment when you first purchased a computer and got online for the first or second......or ok maybe you still think that right know. In any event, after you read this I hope that you will really know whats going on, when you are trolling the web. Did you know that websites like “Facebook” and “Gooogle” track the data you send and receive. “TimeTracker() creates a category with the name "TimeTracker," records a start and end time, computes the difference, and sends that value to the Google Analytics reports” (http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/eventTrackerWrappers.html)



It seems to me that a lot of what we do is actually the payment for the services that we enjoy for free. “Facebook” is willing to give us connection, gaming, and all manner of interaction to are friends and family for a small price. That small price is the things that we are in to as far as hobby's. If I have a flickr.com account, well it’s connected to my yahoo.com account which was purchased by google I think. I also own a facebook.com account, and they all are inter-connected in one way or another.


But through the use of cookies, facebook.com can track me and will ask me if I will allow it to access information from other sites for its own purpose. I can’t but help to think that they are just going to use my information in an inappropriate way. With that said , I have been using these very same services for their true craft. And I have to say, I don’t feel that violated. They do what I was told they do, and I enjoy thier services.

Week 1 EOC: Mordern Internet

At my place of work, the fellas seem to have a limited and also childish perspective of the Internet and what it is used for. Let me explain, anytime one of these co-workers see me on my smart-phone (iPhone) and they assume that I am surfing the web, the first thing out of their mouth is “Hey what-cha you look’n at Porn?”. Look, I don’t know if it’s just these guys that I work with or that its just that alot of people really don’t know that the internet can be used for more.

It is amazing to me that this wonderful piece of technology is right there in front of us and is getting more available and easier to access, but some individuals only see one use for what could be called a “Collective Thought Stream for Pleasure”. I would like to rename what I just called the “Collective Thought Stream for Pleasure” the ““Collective Thought Stream for Knowledge”. And that’s just what it can be used for, shared knowledge. I know what your thinking this is starting to sound like the “Borg” from the classic TV series “Star Track”. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I am trying to say is that we should be sharing knowledge across the Internet. I love Franklin’s perspective on shared knowledge “This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repaired in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me.” Ben Franklin. Franklin believed in public library's. And the Internet is the modern version of the library in my humble opinion. Actually it has become more than just that. You can shop for shoes, clothes, insurance, talk to others, back-up your computer, gaming, and even “Google” and “Facebook” can spy on you and then call it marketing research. I think it is exciting to think what all the new uses the web can be used for like making Money!

EOC Week One: My Voice

All my life I have always imagined myself working in an environment that allowed me to be myself and to be creative. In this place of employment I will not find myself constantly looking at the clock wondering if it is time to go home yet. In fact I hope it’s the type of place where I don’t have to punch a time clock at all. And I hope that it will seem like there isn’t enough time in the day to finish the projects that I am involved in. I love photography, drawing, painting, djay-ing (spinning records) and writing music on my computer in my spare time. I listen, read and absorb news on technology in an attempt to inspire and educate myself. And I hope someday to create my own “Startup” that will provide some very useful and addictive service that a lot of people will love to use. Lately, I have been trying to take notice of people in their everyday life. The things that they do, and how they go about doing those things fascinate me. I can’t help but to think, “I wonder if computers, technology or the web can make that job or that task that a person is trying to accomplish easier?” With the advent of these new smart-phones, I think that my job in the future, as a designer will be an exciting one. I can’t wait to get started.