Biographicon (Continuation)

I decided to add this post to expalin a point regarding Biographicon...

While I was checking out this website, I realized that everybody is allowed to edit the details in your biography/other people's biography... So just out of curiosity I sent an email to Biographicon's team and they responded shortly:

Me: > how do I know that nobody's gonna mess up my biography.. Let's say sombody hates me and wants to add some false info about me... waiting for your reply...

But i really like the idea of Biographicon...It's original!!!<

Feedback: >Hi! Well, that's a great question. The answer is, there is no way to be sure that someone won't ever put some false information in your biography. Generally, the way to guard against this, if you are worried about it, is to periodically check up on your biography. Very glad that you like the site. Please come by any time. Thanks for your comments!<

Just in case anybody was wondering about the same thing, hope this helped...

P.S: If you have any other questions, go to their site and send a message to FEEDBACK!!

Jana:)

Facebook .. Translating ?

How would you feel using an arabic Facebook, Russain, Chinese and a lot more?Lately the company is trying to provide Its users around the world are translating Facebook's visible framework into nearly two dozen languages for free. The goal of it to have one day everyone on the planet using Facebook! Aint it cool?The concept of collaborative translation is familiar in open-source programming communities. But Facebook's effort - as it builds sites in Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and Dutch to join versions in Spanish, French and German that launched this year - is among the highest-profile attempts to harness users' energy to do work traditionally handled by professionals.The Spanish-language version has taken a particular beating for grammatical, spelling and usage problems throughout.
A lot of people have added the translation application.. for example Poke in facebook in Spanish is :dar un toque..in French : faire un signe..in Germany :anstupsen..Too bad for the Japenes they didn’t find and equivlant so they decided to stick to the original facebook! :D

CRSYTAL!

If YouWereMe...???

I guess Web 2.0 is helping us find new horizons for communication...

Imagine you see a complete stranger on the street and ask for his opinion about your daily life matters??

YouWereMe, a free web service that offers real-time everyday life consulting to users from users, made this possible today!!!

You don’t have to be an expert to participate. It’s just about opinions and perspectives, so accuracy and knowledge doesn’t matter.

YouWereMe however; is different from usual Q&A websites since no specific knowledge is necessary to support and help others.

Just describe your subject and specify the profile of the person you want to seek advice from (age, origin or gender… etc), and you can start chatting with users who will be able to give you their own point of view...

Why not???

Jana:)

You can be famous too...

You know that on Wikipedia you can find biographies about celebreties... However not all people are allowed to have their biographies there ofcource...

TechCrunch has reviewed Biographicon, which promises to be somewhere between Wikipedia and social networking. The Biographicon is the place for everyone's biography.

It's not like facebook, linkedIn... because these only allow the user to edit their profile, but with Biographicon everybody's allowed to edit your biography...

It's something original! If you like it join now by entering your own biography... Since their success largely depends upon its users. (If it doesn’t receive enough traction, users won’t bother to add more information to it.)

Check out Fairuz's Biography!

What are you waiting for start searching for people, or try to write your own Biography....

Jana:)

ShutDown Day?? (Additional Topic)

I just thought I should pass this on to you guys...

There's this Organisation http://shutdownday.org/ that spreads awareness against excessive use of computers and it is empowering that by specifying May 3rd, 2008 to be a shutdown day. So if you think you can live without your computer for 1 day check out their wesite mentioned above and participate...

I think this is a great idea especially that this year they are doing flash mobs (According to Wikipedia, "A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief period of time, then quickly disperse.")

The challenge is on! You don't have to participate personally, but atleast see if you can get away from you computer for "1 single day"...

Jana:)

Google Screwed Up My Space????

Well, lots of geniuses are trying to figure out how to earn money by social networks.. For example MySpace, Hi5, facebook.. Like people they don’t check facebook or any of those social networks to buy a bar of chocolate! Lol! But they're there to connect with friends.
Any how, Google has an agreement with MySpace, which has proven unfortunately disappointing.. the deal was that google will serve advertisement on MySpace till 2010. In return it will pay the social network $900 million as part of a revenue share agreement..

The problem is :
If Google doesn't make enough money over MySpace to meet the minimum revenue-share requirements, it has dig deep and make those payments, anyway. And thus far, the deal has shaved roughly 1.5 percent off the company's gross margins, according to estimates from Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay.
All In all, the company's main purpose is business is search, not social media.. Google said on yesterdays earning s conference call that they’re trying new things –including demographic target-and they’ve seen progress…
Well i don’t know how companies earn money in adv. On social netwrok while people are on to chat. For example , i get really annoyed when an adv pops up out of no where.. some adv are just way to useless :S !

Crystal:D

3D Movies Home and Theatre

“3D movies” that sounds fun! A current technology that will make 3D movies a standard entertainment both at home and at the theater in 3-4 years. But while searching I found out that the Stereoscopic 3D is well and alive at the 3D Center of Art & Photography in Portland, Oregon.
http://www.3dcenter.us
In theaters, tickets of 3D movies didn’t make much revenue though it was new theaters. Since people nowadays have home theaters and they can bring the DVD and watch it at home.
Filmmakers and studios alike have promised their allegiance to 3-D... Disney and Pixar announced this week that it will release all of its films in 3-D, starting with Bolt, which is appointed for a November release.... DreamWorks Animation says that by 2009 all of its movies will be released in 3-D. James Cameron is working on big-budget 3-D sci-fi flick called Avatar, and George Lucas is working on remastering all the Star Wars movies in 3-D.”
For studios, the financial allure of 3-D is twofold: The technology can't easily be replicated in home theaters (yet); and moviegoers are still willing to pay a premium for 3-D films. The big question is whether the technology is a game changer or just a short-lived gimmick to drive ticket sales, like Smell-O-Vision -- or, for that matter, the 3-D technology of the 1950s. 'This is a serious visualization technology that's just begun to be used for entertainment,' says Elizabeth Brooks, chief marketing officer of 3-D system maker RealD, which has about 97 percent of the 3-D market. 'It's been used by NASA and by scientists who need to render things perfectly. It's my job to sing the company's praises, but if the technology weren't good, [filmmakers] wouldn't be planning to make as many 3-D films as they're making.'
In the end this technology is there, the purpose of it is not just movies but its getting closer to act for the internet, games and Media experience. But for me I prefer watching a 3D movie and home rather than in theaters that way ill be more comfortable, and nobody will disturb me…

Crystal!

Guess Learning Could Be Fun: MindBites!!!

While I was searching for a new topic to write about, something really interesting caught my attention. There's a new space called MindBites that has become so popular lately...
It is part of Web 2.0 of course since it has a user-generated content, instructional videos actually... MindBites is a self-publishing platform and social marketplace for instructional content, which enables people to share their unique knowledge, skills and passions through audio and video lessons, earning money for themselves or for charity. That way you won’t only be communicating with people but helping them learn something new... It's a HIT. I think MindBites is an original idea that used Web 2.0 in a perfectly efficient way...
Jana:)

Microsoft, News Corp. Team Up in Unholy Agreement

It's all about Dealing and Fighting in the end,in my opinion.. Should people worry about Myspace?Microsoft joint? Let us check :
Microsoft moved rapidly in response to yesterday's news that Yahoo is closing in on a deal with AOL. The software giant is reportedly joining forces with News. Corp. to submit a joint offer for Yahoo.
Under the agreement, News Corp. would buy Yahoo, and the three companies(Microsoft, Yahoo and News Corp.)& would combine their online assets, which include MSN, Yahoo and MySpace. The Times says "it's a shift in strategy for News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who reportedly met with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang early on and offered to help fend off Microsoft."
Under the terms of the Yahoo-AOL deal, Time Warner would risk off AOL assets (excluding the dialup ISP) on Yahoo, & put a cash investment in the combined company, and take a 20% equity stake in it.Yahoo would use the Time Warner cash to buy back a few billion dollars in stock to drive the share price back up, thus possibly quiet sulky investors.

But still not sure and clear that the AOL agreement would do much to satisfy unhappy investors. Yahoo will still be affected by the same problems that it had before the Microsoft takeover bid. The winning of AOL = 10 billion $! thats a quiet huge amount of profit!!!
"We think shareholders would prefer to cash out via a Microsoft offer — with or without News Corp. — rather than keep Yahoo in the hands of current Yahoo management with the addition of a troubled asset called AOL," says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics. "I think Yahoo management has lost its credibility in terms of execution and strategy — not just because of its operational weakness, but also because of how they have handled the Microsoft bid."
Steve Ballmer that served Yahoo with an ultimatum says that if the deal is not done before 3weeks as a deadline of 26April,Microsoft will launch a proxy battle to take over Yahoo's board.
I wish they will agree on the deal and finish before the deadline unless A Battle will start all over the place :S! Anyways, Ill keep you people Updated!
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/04/report-report-m.html
CRYSTAL!:D

The IT World!

First, What is an IT? I think many people Have no idea what an IT is. Likewise, At first i didnt know what it really means! Being in Class Of Media and New Technology it open our eyes to New Technologies and many different ways to search all around about New Tech& media in different sources! I choose this topic bc i see that most of the world is innneed of IT especailly big companies like Apple, Mirosoft, Yahoo... and alot more!
IT: Information Technology
IT : Is The development, installation, and implementation of computer systems and applications. Both hardware and software, and often including networking and telecommunications, usually in the context of a business or other enterprise.. in other words :Breaking Tech News For Technology Executives,Software To Help Your Business Succeed!
Fisrt Topic im goin to talk about is :

Apple to New York City: Bite Me!

The Big Apple has a new logo, and Apple says: Drop dead.
At issue is the visible symbol representing an abstract idea for New York City's GreeNYC , which has started to appear around the city on bus shelters, hybrid gasoline-electric taxicabs and even Whole Foods shopping bags.
The GreeNYC logo shows a stylized apple with a stalk and a leaf. It bears a resemblance to Apple's famous logo. A resemblance Apple says exceed the limits of its trademark. The city has applied for a trademark on the logo, but Apple has filed a formal opposition obtained by Wired.com. Saying that:
"The Cupertino, California, company calls for the trademark to be denied, claiming the city's logo will confuse people and "seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services."

New York says: Getdafugoutaheya.

"The city believes that Apple's claims have no merit and that no consumer is likely to be confused," says Gerald Singleton, the intellectual-property lawyer representing the Big Apple. "This well-known city is using its new design in a variety of contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with Apple Inc."

Apple is no stranger to trademark disputes, but has typically been on the receiving end of agreement claims. Apple Corps, holder of the Beatles business interests, struggled the company for years over its trademark. That legal strike was finally resolved last year, with Apple having the entire brand and an visible agreement to license certain trademarks back to Apple Corps.

Cisco Systems also filed suit over Apple's use of the iPhone trademark last year, and both companies finally agreed to share the iPhone name..
In the end, Beth Goldman, an attorney at Heller Ehrman and head of the firm's San Francisco trademark group. Was trying to to make a point and clear the situation. As for Singleton , she says that not before 6 to 9 months a final decision is made by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the patent office.
In my opinion, and my readings i found that Apple had many problems with different comapnies for example microsoft! That ill be talking about the case soon.. I mean like take a break Apple and stop making big deal all have similar designs and plus i see that this logo is similair to googels as a friend commented on the discusion board you think it should eneter the struggle ???? :D
CRYSTAL

RE: Is Web 2.0 Amoral?

Well I read this article on Wired.com posted by Nicholas Carr on October 3, 2005.
We were talking about the word Amoral in class on the same day I read the article, that's why I got too curious to know more about it...
Therefore; I decided to give a nuetral conclusion based on several sources i used while learning more about Web 2.0... First, I would like to say that Web 2.0 was a great invention for the worldWideWeb. I mean the reason behind its creation was to let humans enjoy their "own" world of peace, liberty and intellegence. I also read that in the future, according to Kevin Kelly, the Web will grant us not only the vision of gods but also their power... (Im a believer so I kinda doubt that but I do understand that the Web will shift humans to a much advanced and powerful level!) However; We have to admit that Web 2.0 has alot of flaws... I'm with Xeni Jardin that when you invite the whole world to your party, inevitably someone pees in the beer. I mean ofcource...
We all suffer from spam, SEO's, junk diaries filled with keyword-rich text to lure traffic for ad revenue. ..
All that is true! I dont know about Wikipedia though I mean i thought Wiki is ranked as equally leveled with Britannica. In the end there are experts that evaluate everything added to Wiki and they decide whether to accept it or not. So it is done by experts too... Although I dont like the downside of that for the economy because encyclopedias', newspapers'... business is going down. We use information we find on the web and use them, we even take them sometimes from blogs and Wikipedia (as in Web 2.0) etc... As for the fact that Web2.0 is supporting the participation of amatuers... Yes, there are amatuers but as a reader, I should be aware of that, I should be able to know what I can consider as a reliable source and yes Wiki is one reliable source that's what Im taught. Ofcourse you shouldnt use Wikipedia as your only source, actually you shouldnt use only 1 source even if it's Britanica, but Wiki is helpful to get an overview of a certain subject... Also, Im against using Web 2.0 for advetising puposes like some companies increase the traffic their site receives from search engines (SEO) but ofcourse ads should still be part of it and can never not be. Any good marketing plan should include participating in something like Web 2.0 that invaded the web so quickly...

The solution in my opinion is to assign protectors for Web 2.0 that would prevent cracks such as spam and so on just like the online photo-sharing service Flickr which, despite its open nature and robust membership growth, has so far remained relatively parasite-resistant. So I think its not impossible to reach that if each society worked on this problem solely.
Is Web 2.0 Amoral? Ofcourse, but i think its closer to being moral than immoral...

Jana:)

Technorati.com

Technorati Profile

Internet Vs. Books...

I've checked alot of sites and I noticed that the book industry is going down... There is a revolution of publishing via internet... For instance the E-book is an invention that most people are using nowadays and has become a major replacement of Real books. This way you can have your own library in this small electronic device thats coming in small and different shapes and forms...

Also, there is http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.packtpub.com/, http://www.ereadable.com/... which are websites that actually sell books online...

In addition there are:

-E-Bookstores: There are special e-bookstores that sell only e-books. These sites generally offer more information on the titles, authors, publishing houses, and provide e-book news and reviews.

-Publishing House Sites: Some publishing houses have set up sites to sell directly to you both print and electronic books. These include the Print-on-Demand publishers who print a copy of a book only after you've paid for it. They almost always offer electronic editions of these books, too.

Also Check out:http://www.galttech.com/research/buying-online/online-bookstores.php

There are alot of new ways for publshing and wherever you click while searching for a book you'll find Ads that say: "Are you an author? Looking for a publisher?"...

Who knows what the future holds for "Books"? Our children might not have to read in the future, maybe the information will be downloaded to their brain immediately:P

P.S: I was checking punlishing news and by chance visited a blog: http://bookpublishingnews.blogspot.com/. If anybody's interested in book publishing, you might like to check it out...

It's all about the people...

I know that Web 2.o has been there for a while, I mean Wikis have been around since 1995 now, but i decided to talk about it becuase until now, I feel people dont really understand its significance. Web 2.0 have brought communication and media to a whole new level...

- Web 2.0 has numerous definitions. Tim O'Reilly regards Web 2.0 as business embracing the web as a platform and using its strengths (global audiences, for example). O'Reilly considers that Eric Schmidt's abridged slogan, don't fight the Internet, encompasses the essence of Web 2.0 — building applications and services around the unique features of the Internet, as opposed to building applications and expecting the Internet to suit as a platform (effectively "fighting the Internet").
Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data.
W: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2#Characteristics

Web 2.0 services are sometimes defined as web activities that get more valuable the more people use them.
It turned out that alot of executives use Web 2.0 in their daily life.

• LinkedIn

This is probably the easiest Web 2.0 tool to integrate into your day-to-day operations, because it's built around the business résumé. To get going, you just enter your curriculum vitae, search for the names of people you know and trust, and invite them to "connect" to you.

• Facebook

We all know facebook... Forrester (FORR) CEO George Colony thinks every marketer should be using Facebook, if only to see what its 67 million members are up to.

• Twitter

A relative of the IM (instant message) and diminutive cousin of the blog, Twitter is a free service that encourages members to broadcast moment-to-moment updates of what they're doing or thinking in 140 characters or less.
Blip.tv, a New York-based Internet video startup, uses Twitter to eavesdrop on its customers. In January it started hearing complaints there about one part of its service, a problem it quickly corrected.

• Dopplr

It is used for sharing travel itineraries.
J.P. Rangaswami a managing director at BT has become a heavy user of this tool. Before Dopplr, which launched last December, it took repeated e-mails to keep contacts informed of his whereabouts. Now his 140 Dopplr contacts know where he is at any moment.
Also, Jigsaw invites you to upload and publish your collection of business cards. At Jobscore you and other executives can swap the résumés of job candidates you don't hire and so on...
W:http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/19/technology/web2.0_goofing.fortune/index.htm


Web 2.0 Summit focuses on emerging business and technology developments that utilize the Web as a platform and defines how the Web will drive business in the future.
As important though, is the tangible value which the Web 2.0 provides today:
- Leveraging The Long Tail. Amazon and eBay used this idea to build companies worth billions and billions. This is how. Web 2.0 provides both the audience and the services.
- Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. Monolithism is dead, we can't build big stuff like that any more. It's not agile nor can what you build be aggregated, deliver sustained value, or even survive for long.
- Self-Service and Participation. Fostering this lets you capture new value in your Web 2.0 apps 24 hours a day. Examples: Tagging, ranking, trackbacks, reputations.
- Radical Decentralization. Single sources of function are single sources of failure and are unacceptable now. And they don't scale to either deliver or capture significant value.
- Emergent Behavior. Your Web 2.0 functionality can be reused, remixed, aggregated, and syndicated and the resulting value reintegrated back into your application.

Web 2.0 thrives on another cool technology called RSS. As many of you already know, RSS allows users to get automatic updates when a site changes instead of checking it all the time to get the latest information. One simply subscribes to the site’s RSS feed, and as content changes the information is automatically delivered to your RSS reader or aggregator.
With Web 2.0 RSS kicks in the turbo and becomes widely used to syndicate, filter and re-mix news, articles and other types of content into new information items.

Some great examples of this Web 2.0 approach include:

Andale.com, a site that analyzes sales information from eBay and provides it to users so they can best take advantage of the auction site. Another is HousingMaps.com, a site powered by Craigslist.org and Google Maps, but not officially affiliated with either.

We also have http://www.blogger.com/ which bloggers like myself are its source of information and usage, In addition, there is http://www.youtube.com/ and which people's videos are its whole content, http://www.secondlife.com/...

Tim Bray writes:
More immediately, Web 2.0 is the era when people have come to realize that it's not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web. Web 1.0 was the era when people could think that Netscape (a software company) was the contender for the computer industry crown; Web 2.0 is the era when people are recognizing that leadership in the computer industry has passed from traditional software companies to a new kind of internet service company. The net has replaced the PC as the platform that matters, just as the PC replaced the mainframe and minicomputer.

More to come is Web 3.0! It's all about being connected now...

Jana:)

Creative Zen

As a Gadget obsessed person or in other words "lover", I always search for what's new on the market! While searching i found Creative Zen! I decided my personal posts to new gadget.. Ofcourse this gadget is going to have to do with Media&New Technologies

What is Creative Zen? Are you Bored from Apple MP3 and Others???

Well Creative Zen is s Flash-Based MP3 player Has many Advantages and 1 disadvantage to me.

Advantages :

1.reduced size

2. five-band equalizer

3. play FLAC or Ogg Vorbis audio codecs

4.can handle most audio formats, including Apple's AAC files.

5. works with MPEG-4, DivX4, DivX5, XviD, and WMV video files.

6.A standard mini-USB jack built into the Zen's tiny frame.

7. has a 30-hour play time for audio files (5 hours for video)

8.Zen comes bundled with few accessories: a good pair of earbuds, a short USB cable, and an instruction pamphlet.

9. it costs around 179.00$..184.00 $..300$ (depends on the market)

10.have a built-in SD Card slot to accommodate an instant space upgrade.

DISADVANTAGES:

1. lack the funky Wi-Fi functionality of Apple's iPod Touch

All in All, I just loved this device and i think its a Useful one as well! In the end whatever comforts my life i seek to searh for and what brings fun,music,photos,games is what fulfill my my entertainment needs ;)!

PS: playstations with its different versions, Game cube and Gameboy are considered as part of my preferable entertaiment Of New Technologies!

CRYSTAL