March 11, 2008
Three guys have apparently created their own Rockband with their modified iphones. Rockband is one thing, grown people playing video game controllers that look like musical instruments that actually sound like pieces of plastic banging together, but to play rockband on modified iphones is probably the geekiest thing i’ve heard of in a long time.
What’s remarkable is that these guys were able to do this. What this means is that some where in the world some one figured out how to create an application that turns in iphone into a guitar, piano or bass, or any instrument really. These guys used a Nintendo DS to play piano. It’s absolutely absurd to think that people can modify their phones to turn it into a controller in order to play a game that is for specific gaming systems. the real question is, is this legal? I have no clue, but it sure sounds time intensive, and i might as well go buy the actual Rockband game that way i don’t have to break my iphone guitar in the encore of a concert.
March 11, 2008
Jeremy Jaynes was convicted of illegal spamming and is the nation’s first conviction according to wired.com. He is sentenced to nine years in prison, which seems like an awful lot for illegal spamming. I’m not really sure what makes illegal spamming illegal, but i think it has something to do with how he sent the e-mails. Either way, i find this most interesting because it really sets a lot of precedent for future cases, and the lack of precedent for this case is probably why the Virginia Supreme Court voted 4-3 on the case, and i wouldn’t be surprised if this one goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. This case brings up issues of the First Amendment as well as interstate commerce as well as intellectual property, and should really prove to be the testing ground for future digital felony cases.
March 11, 2008
An article from mashable.com, revealed that a Kentucky congressman is trying to require that all post on the Internet be identified and that anonymous posts would become illegal. This seems like a good idea to hold everyone accountable for what they say, but really its a poor attempt to correct a problem that is not reversible. This is in response to multiple suicides as a result of on-line bullying, which seems like a very strange topic in itself. the article’s author claims that the idea of banning anonymous posting is really impossible and ultimately not easily enforceable.
What i see in the article and why it really sparked my attention , is that people are blaming technology for tragic events, when really its the people that are causing problems. Trying to stop suicides because of on-line bullying sounds good, but can on-line bullying really be blamed for suicides? I think this is another situation where people need to step out of the digital realm and really analyze what happened hear. I don’t know all of the facts about these suicides, but something tells me that it had a lot more to do with an individual than the Internet.
March 11, 2008
An article from chronicle.com discusses one Michigan State professor’s effort to not use technology for one day. She does end up using her telephone because she was at work for the day, and to not use a telephone at work is probably impossible.
I think Rewire Your Life Day is a genius idea, and it really goes along with one of my previous blogs where i talked about how some of my friends, and people everywhere, aren’t hopping on the digital bandwagon as much as others of us are. I think this would be a great way to help people recognize how desperately dependent we are on technology. Personally i feel like every generation after mine and including mine is probably horrible at spelling because of spell check. There are really thousands of examples of how dependent we are on technology, and it’s sort of frightening. As a kid my parents used to make us have an occasional TV Free day, where we wouldn’t watch TV at all because they wanted Me and my siblings to get outside and do something with our lives. A Rewire Your Life Day would be a great way for people to really step into the past and experience human interaction as it has never been before.
With the abundance of e-mail and cell phone conversations we have it’s remarkable that there is anyone with real people skills anymore. That’s why, in a sstrange way, i’m glad that i’m not the best at talking on a cell phone because i never get a complaint about not being heard or being misunderstood when talking to someone in person. People skills, as i’ll call them, are still very important in this world, but how can we expect people learn these skills when instead of learning how to better communicate your ideas in person we are finding new ways to communicate digitally.
I think that technology is really a good thing and i’m as dependent on it as anyone, but what i’d like to challenge people to do is to not use a cell phone for one day. I’ve done it for a week once when my cell phone broke. It’s a very strange feeling, not knowing where your friends are, or if there is going to be anyone at home when you get there; but it is also liberating to go a day with only being concerned with your current situation rather than being constantly connected with others and their current situation.
March 11, 2008
Aren’t there enough commercials out there already? Are Americans turning into walking zombie-consumers? Yes and yes. This article about the new Project Canoe, which the major cable companies are beginning to develop, really reminded me how important commercials are to America’s economy and that millions, or probably billions, of dollars are put into advertisements that may or may not help a product succeed. It’s also strange, but expected, that there is now software monitoring our TV watching and that commercials are now going to be catered to our specific interests. Thank god for tivo and dvr!
Perhaps, the most saddening fact of this story is that Google is getting involved with the advertisement world. I know that Google needs ads to survive as a website, but why join the side of the advertises and inundate us with even more commercials. The Internet was an escape from unwanted ads for me because i could block pop-ups and no ads ever really interrupted my web activity, and to know that Google is going to help TV companies market commercials to me makes me wonder what Google’s real purpose is.
The other particularly annoying part of this article is that Cable companies continue to operate in their ever powerful oligopoly of commercials and overpriced television. The fact that all of the cable companies, all six of them, went in on a deal to make sure that they won’t ever have to pay for Google to tell them what commercials they need to run. The fact that the cable companies don’t want to pay Google makes sense to me, but for people to be blatantly controlled by an entire industry (which a lot of people have or feel like they need) seems to be a rip off, or maybe even illegal. In a radio program called This American Life there is one show devoted to a similar, much more illegal, scheme between all of the industry leaders of a different industry that really makes my stomach churn. Now in the case of the radio program, they are fixing prices and with Project Canoe the cable companies are only watching out for themselves which is not illegal, but still represents the power that companies can have in an industry where there are only six major companies.
February 28, 2008
With traditional searches we found that the sites provided offered more factual information on what/ who Marketing Strategies and David Beckham are, where as the live web searches provided examples of the subject. For example google offered more biographical information on Beckham and his career/life, but the live web searches (youtube and Bloglines) provided either videos of his goals and recent upates on what he has been involved with and what he’s been doing. With the live web searches we also found more obscure discussion of his life, family and career, such as the fact that he’s probably having a fourth child. When we searched “marketing strategies” and traditional sites provide more of an educational perspective of what marketing strategies exista and how they were used, very similar to a text book. The live web searches gave more examples of marketing strategies and real life applications of such strategies. Youtube had videos of people talking about particular strategies that they found particularly successful and bloglines had a lot more questions from people wondering how to market various things. In both searches we found that the information provided by the live web searches was more recent and specialized, where as google provided older and more mainstream sites. Both seemed useful on the topics we searched, but depending on the purpose of the search one could be better than the other.
John Scheflow & Lindsay Brelus
February 28, 2008
Listening to the speakers this past Tuesday talk about the steep exponential curve in reference to the advancement of technology and to then hear them ask how many people don’t take part in technology has sparked an idea in my head. I have several friends that have really rejected new technology beyond a basic cellphone, their computers and music recording technology. Now my friends are definitely in their hippie musical artist phase of their life or perhaps that’s who they are, but i think that there are probably more people in the world just like them. These people may reject technology as a political statement in a way, as a response to the ever growing ability of new technology, or it may be that they never jumped on board to the steep learning curve and now are falling further and further behind. One of my friends in particular was never really introduced to new technology as a kid, meaning he never had cable or the Internet until very recently, and he still has dial up, even as a college student who has access to very fast Internet at school, and the most distinguishable fact about my friend Colin is that he never played video games. In fact he totally rejects them. So maybe because he was never introduced to accepting new technological advances, he has fallen behind and not been able to catch up to the new wave of convergence technology. Perhaps there is actually a whole section of my generation, which has been around for the most recent surge in technology but also around when almost no one had the Internet, that does not subscribe to technology like the rest of us. These people may be a conscientious objectors or they may be developmentally challenged, meaning they never started riding the wave of technology and it’s become way too difficult to hop on the wave while at the crest. Will these people ever catch on or will they forever be disconnected from the technology that is defining a generation? Are they the link to the previous generation and are those of us that utilize technology the link to generations after us?
February 20, 2008
Wired. com reported that the largest collection of music is up for sale on eBay. This collection has millions of songs with all genres of American music represented. It also have all sorts of formats including hundreds of thousands of CDs. What is really interesting is that this collection is for sale on eBay because it is worth millions of dollars, maybe even 50 million dollars. I wonder what most expensive purchase on eBay is, but this one has to be up there. The owner of the collection says in the article that he wants it to go to a museum or university or something of the sort, but why would he sell it on eBay if that’s what he wanted. I think this guy should go to the Smithsonian and start asking or something. I think that by selling it on eBay the worth of the collection is down played, but that may just be my more archaic sense of music collection speaking. As a fan of legal music purchasing and artist support, i believe that this collection should be purchased in person with plenty of legal advice because this is more than most peoples house cost, and there are plenty of people involved in buying houses. Also, what do the record companies say about this? It’s a question of intellectual property, does this owner have the right to sell and make a profit on music that belongs to the record companies? I believe he has the right, but it’s interesting because this will be the legitimate sale of music online in an era of illegal music downloads and record company complaints.
January 24, 2008
Unfortunately this article is not about Miles Davis and his landmark Cool Jazz album, but it is about a computer that is very important to recent history. The article comes from Wired News and it explains the importance of the Macintosh 128K computer. It also discusses the struggle for power within the mac corporation. Basically Steve Jobs needed help so he brought in the president of Pepsi, and then they didn’t get along, (of course) so they had a little feud. Eventually Jobs was ousted, but he returned to glory in 1996 and we can all feel good inside for this man. Silicon Valley has never been so scandalous.
January 24, 2008
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