The world is changing no matter what

<--old cell phones vs. newer

We all love reminiscing of what we did before we had high speed internet, cell phones, and all the technology we have now. This site I found tech.msn.com, has an article that is very interesting and shares what is deceased or nearly instinct. Technology is definitely hitting us hard during our century. Looking back I think, I don’t know what I would have done without some of the gadgets I used. We know it can be done, because the older generation than me lived without all the technology and gadgets.
Computers are so much fast now than even ten years ago when we had dial up. Also, do you all remember getting AOL discs in the mail for a free trial of it? You do not see that happening anymore. Getting a busy signal when calling people because they were either on the internet or the other line is very unlikely anymore. Most people now have call waiting or multiple lines. Also, their internet may not be hooked up directly to their main phone line because all people today do not have a landline.
Cell phones have definitely boomed within the past ten years especially. It seem every year Verizon, Alltel, Sprint, etc. have multiple new phones out that all have millions of uses for them besides the basic calling or even texting. Today people use their cell phones for nearly everything, with some exceptions. If you think about it, the next concert you go to compare how many people you see holding up their cell phones during a song to how many people that hold up actual lighters like they did before cell phones were big.
Texting being more popular than actually calling the person to talk does have more of an effect than you think on yourself. If you pick up on texting lingo or even instant messaging lingo, it may put a damper on your grammar. Using the shortened versions of words may look cool and be easier while texting or iming, but in the long run you will continue to use them without even knowing it. If you are careful about it and remember that only using those shortened version of words when texting or iming is fine, but it is when you start writing a paper for school and those words are showing through in your writing.

Examples of some texting/iming words – gr8 =great, l8er=later, b4=before, ttyl=talk to you later

Do you text or instant message frequently? Do you think it has had an effect on your grammar or anyone you know?

Are Gadgets Making us Dumber?

Today we have millions of gadgets that never existed before. The real question is, are these gadgets making us dumber? There can be arguments going both ways for this topic, because it is hard to prove. Many say that new gadgets and technology are making us dumber and others say it enhances what we already know.
A good point that is made in this video, is that we do not have to remember things as much with gadgets. Our cell phones save all of our phone numbers so we do not have to ever remember them. They have speed dial so instead of us dialing the number over and over and having any chance of remembering the numbers, we only have to hit one button. If we can access everything every time, then why is there a reason to take a lot of time and learn everything when it is right at our finger tips on search engines. Also, there are a lot of people out in the world who could not do long division if you just walked up to them and asked them. This is because we depend on calculators so much. I know I depend on calculators a lot, because I was never real good at math, so as long as I got through the classes I could I was good to go without a calculator later on in life.
Another good point brought up in the video is that the term of smart is going to have to change soon. All of the gadgets today helping us, the meaning of smart may change by either gaining knowledge of the use of technology or losing it and just relying on it.
Growing up with technology growing so fast may have a good effect to some people. It may help people be multi-taskers and exercise their brain. The downfall of being so into technology and gadgets may be that social intelligence may be lacking a little. When people are always using computers, cell phones, and social networking sites to socialize may be harmful later in life with socialization. Kids that grow up with all of those gadgets and never socialized personally may have a difficult time meeting new people and that may cause them to be an outcast, which could cause other problems like them getting into drugs or other illegal activities to fit in. I know that seems a little extreme, but it could happen.

Oprah's Show Coming to an End

Oprah Winfrey is a very successful woman and has millions of fans that look up to her. She recently stated that she is going to be done with The Oprah Show in 2011. The last show will be aired September 9, 20011. She feels that after 25 years of doing her show, it will be a good time to be done. The show has consumed most of her time and pretty much has been her life for the past 25 years. According to Reel Empire, Oprah has not watched a season episode of hers yet and does not plan to even up to her last show.
Oprah’s friend Gayle King speaks out in this video about Oprah’s show coming to an end. http://entertainment.msn.com/video/?g=5b23f6ea-d85f-11de-a2ad-d26b63a74c6d&gt1=42007 – video link. She speaks out about how she thinks the society as a whole really doesn’t realize how much of an impact Oprah’s show ending is going to have on a whole society. She knew the announcement was coming before anyone and even when she heard it; it was still a big shock. It will be even more of a shock when it actually really happens and is done. According to Gayle, Oprah may be quitting the show, but she is not going to be totally riding off into the sunset and quitting everything cold turkey. She also shares how she is a hard worker and very energetic. She said after Oprah is on vacation for about three days, she is ready to go back to work so it should be interesting to see how she does with all the time off after she is done with the show.
According to the press room of Oprah’s show, Oprah’s program reaches about 42 million viewers each week in the United States. I don’t know about anyone else, but that is a lot of people she is touching. I remember Oprah ever since I can remember and that is probably because her show started just a year before I was born, which was 1986. She was the first African American to have her own talk show and she was very successful at it. She has more money than she could ever spend in her entire life. She donates a lot of it to different charities and gives her audience gifts on the show. She is a very considerate and caring person.
What are your thoughts about the Oprah show ending? Do you think it will have a big impact on society? If so, how?

Star Light Star Bright

First star I see tonight – The 2009 Leonid meteor shower just happened in the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 17th, 2009.
A meteor shower is basically tons of shooting or falling stars in the sky. The streaks of light that fly across the sky are tiny bits of rock from space, according to geology.com. The friction with air molecules heats up the rocks to make them glow so much. Believe it or not, they are smaller than a grain of rice usually and usually burn up in a couple seconds. The ones that are especially bright are called bolides. They are usually the ones that catch your eye the most.
During the Leonid meteor shower, you may have been able to see anywhere from 30 to 300 shooting stars an hour according to National Geographic News. This is depending on if you were in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, the peak of this meteor was at about 4:45 p.m., leaving it invisible for people in North America and Europe to see. If you went out of town to watch the shower, you definitely were able to see plenty of shooting stars. Enough to get in a few wishes at least.
It was called Leonids shower this year because, they were supposedly radiating from the constellation Leo, the lion. Other previous important meteor showers were named, Perseids and the Orionids. Meteor showers are very nice to look at and watch, even if you are not into science. It is almost surreal watching hundreds of shooting stars, when at other times of the year you freak out if you see just one shooting star. I don’t know if I would be wishing on meteor showers though, because just think of how many other people may be wishing on that same star you were. I guess it could be a test to find out just how lucky you really are. How many of you watched the meteor shower this year?

Online Gaming

Online games may seem like a complete waste of time to some people. It used to always be that adults would blame kids and teenagers for wasting time playing these online games. Now, adults are just as guilty for playing these online games. Even if they are married and have kids, they still cannot give up the games that give them entertainment.
Entertainment is a good reason to play these online games. I never used to play online games as much as I do now that I am in college. Playing online games can be a good stress reliever. After a long day at work or school, it is nice to come home and play Farkle or Bejeweled Blitz. There are many more different online games; those are just a couple that I play on Facebook. As bad as it is to admit, I do play these online games as a reason to procrastinate homework or things I do not want to do at that time. These games can be addicting at times too. You may say just one more game and you do that over and over again and before you know it, you are up until 3 am.
Online gaming is not always healthy, especially if you do not have self control. Self-control is a big deal because if you do not have this while playing online games, you will get sucked into them and may become addicted to them. People may not admit to becoming addicted to online games, but Farmville is a perfect example of people becoming addicting. Getting people addicted to the game has a lot to do with how well the game is set up and the point of it; also the interaction in the game. My roommate is addicted Farmville, she plants her crops at certain times so she is able to be available to harvest them. She plans on doing all of this farming around her work and class schedules.
The numbers of adults that still play online games did surprise me, because I thought that after people got married and had kids they would not have any time to sit around and play games. What are your thoughts about online gaming? Do you think you will still be playing them after you get married and have kids? If you play them now, do you think they are addicting and what are some benefits or drawbacks of online gaming?

Perfect Picture

Cameras have come a long ways in today’s world. Before when they first came out, they were so big and bulky. Every camera owner on a family vacation would have the bulky camera hanging around their neck just waiting to capture a moment to remember forever. Later on as the cameras started getting smaller and smaller disposable cameras also came about. It was a huge deal to some people when cameras were small enough to fit into purses or even pockets.
Digital cameras came out and have been a hit ever since. They obviously come out with newer versions of them as fast as you can take a picture almost. It always seems like when you just buy the newest camera they come out with one that has just a few more megapixels. According to this article from msn.com digital cameras have pretty much maxed out the amount of megapixels they can have in each camera.
The Samsung DualView has a 1.5 inch LCD screen on the front of the camera as well as the traditional larger LCD screen on the back. This would be very handy if there were only two people that wanted to take a picture together. Instead of trying five hundred times to get the two of you centered in a picture, you would be able to tell right away from the front LCD screen. For some people that is the fun part of not knowing what the picture will look like when you hold the camera with your outstretched arms, and for those people they can either keep using the older versions of digital cameras or change the options on this camera.
Another option with the camera is to change the settings of the front LCD screen so it is of an animated cartoon. I think it is a brilliant idea, because sometimes getting a kid to smile while taking a picture is the hardest thing ever. Also, for those who do not want to see what the picture looks like while taking it themselves can just have this feature on. The front LCD screen will also show a countdown for the self-timer. What fun is that you say? I don’t know, I guess those families who just like to take the picture once and get it over with, instead of having someone try and dive into the picture would like that feature.
The back LCD screen has the feature of being a touch screen. Touch screen anything in technology seems to be the new in trend. I do not know how well I would like the touch screen, but maybe it is something a person just has to get used to. What do you think about having a LCD screen on the front of a camera?

Only 150 extra miles and an hour longer of your time

It has been all over the news, the plane that flew 150 miles past their destination of Minneapolis airport. According to the MSN article, Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney were the two pilots who claim to have been on their laptops and became distracted by looking at their schedules. They made it perfectly clear that they did not fall asleep.
It is hard to believe that they lost track of time for a whole hour, even if they were distracted an hour is a long time. It is very scary that they were out of contact for more than an hour with the airline. It is kind of sad that they did not even realize it until a flight attendant mentioned something. How long do you think it would have taken them to realize that they had past their destination? At least the people traveling got their money’s worth. I think it is always nice when the pilots come on the intercom system of the plane and give updates, but obviously that was not a top priority for these pilots. Riders on the plane you think would be wondering what was taking so long, because if you were planning on getting to your destination at a certain time and it was an hour later you would be wondering what was wrong.
Both pilots seem to have a clear record as of flying in the past and are said to be experienced according to their experiences. They were obviously caught not doing their job and it makes you wonder how many times they have been on their laptops on previous flights to this one. It is hard to determine how harsh of a punishment to give them. They were not doing their job, but they were flying the plane just fine to keep it going about 150 miles past their destination landing. The pilots should be punished in some way for not monitoring any of the messages sent from the airlines or other aircrafts. There should be no reason for flying over a city of destination. If I were a passenger on that flight, I would be very thankful to be alive and kind of mad for what happened. I am sure the pilots were very sorry and did not have much to say because they knew they were in the wrong. What are your thoughts about this situation? Do you think the pilots should remain suspended for a longer period of time or have their license taken away?

Online Videos

Videos online have come a long way in the world of the web. Who would have every thought we would be able to watch television shows, movies, and other videos people post online? These videos may have a point of some sort or may be totally random.
YouTube is a site that shares millions of video clips of all sorts. There are videos that include educational information, which is very helpful towards learning. Also, students are able to create their own videos and post them for others to learn from their creation. In that way, YouTube is an excellent source.
There are also many businesses and others using this site to advertise. The video clips act as commercials that are linked to other videos, so people click on them. They are able to put their product in a video that attracts viewers. Viewers get hooked on clicking the different videos that are connected to each other in some way, whether it would be by their name or some other way.
So many people become “addicted” to watching these videos clips online. Most of the videos are not very long, maybe ten minutes at the most. People will go on to look up one video and the next thing they know, two hours has gone by. The smallest clip can turn into clicking another one and then another and so on. It is not necessarily horrible for people to be watching these multiple videos over and over and not doing anything productive with their life. Staring at the screen for hours upon hours can be harmful. Others stare at computer screens for hours of a day for their jobs, but doing it for hours and not being productive will haunt you later on in life, in such a way of ruining your eyesight or other ways. According to this site, http://webvideouniversity.com/blog/2009/03/27/people-spend-85-hours-a-day-staring-at-screens/, the age group 35-44 spends more time on the internet and in front of screens than younger generations. This fact surprised me very much so. I would have totally guessed that younger people spend more time on the web. I still think that it just depends on the person as to how much time they spend in front of computer screens. I know friends who can literally sit for hours on end watching YouTube videos and others who it kills them to sit on a computer for a half hour.

Videos Can Help You Study

Studying is one thing that most people do not appreciate doing. Taking the time to go over topics you have already learned and engraving them into your brain. Somehow most people make it through their high school years of studying, whether it is on the bus ride for a sports game or staying home from the basketball game to do it. Then, there are college years, which you may have to stay home from going out with your friends for a night just to finish that project or cram all night for a test.
Universities require students to take the ACT or SAT tests in order to be accepted. Everyone dreads taking these tests, even though you can take them as many times as you want. There are ways you can study for them and multiple online “quizzes” to take to prepare yourself. Nobody wants to study everything they have learned throughout all of their previous school years just for this one test, because it would take forever. Kids do not want to take time away from their daily lives of watching funny youtube videos or others online to study for the SAT.
Now, higher score insight has a video that helps students prepare for the SAT. They call it suck-free learning. There are multiple crazy things to keep you entertained in this video such as a bear that swills energy drinks and also refreshes your memory in multiple areas. The video on the higher score insight site is all about introduction of the SAT and eliminating distractions. Instead of this boring website: http://www.satexamprep.com/, which provides a boring way to prepare for the SAT test.
The video is broken down into eight different episodes, with each being about 14 minutes long. Having the information broken up and organized makes it so much easier for viewers to comprehend. I think it would be a lot easier to keep clicking and watching these videos over and over again like youtube videos to refresh your brain on information. Episodes 1 and 2 are currently released and other episodes are in the making.
It will be interesting to look back ten years from now and see how the scores have changed from students who decide to use these videos to help them study for the SAT. There is a fee of $29 for all eight episodes of the prep SAT. If you think about it that is pretty cheap because in the end they will pay off and you can always sell them when you are done taking the test.

Photo Sharing

Photo sharing website is becoming more popular than ever. It is a great and easy way to store and share photos. There are advantages and disadvantages to photo sharing sites, just like everything else. There are many things to think about before putting your photos on these sites. Whatever you put on the internet can come back and haunt you, because even if you delete it someone else might have saved it before you deleted it. Another thing to think about is being careful when people are taking pictures of you. You never know who might have a picture of you or what they will do with it. If they put it on a photo sharing site and you may not want it on there you might be out of luck, because they may be friends with your boss on this photo sharing site and then your boss will be able to see all of their photos. So one thing to think about is, who’s getting pictures of you and make sure you are not doing something you wouldn’t want others to see. Some examples of photo sharing sites consist of Flickr and Photobucket are two of the top ones.
Disadvantages of photo sharing include, once you have published your photos anyone can access them. Most sites have privacy settings, but you can never be too sure. People can take your photos from your site and then they are out of your hands as to what they do with them. There are risks of putting photos online as with everything else in the world. Just because you have your photos saved on your sharing site, does not mean that you should not have a back up to those photos if they are precious to you. You never know with technology, they could be wiped out in a second and never retrieved back again. Advantages of having a photo sharing account are many photos can be shared at one time. The photos can be organized so each photo can be found very easily and quickly. Also, you can easily share photos with friends, family, and even for your job. It is great for those who live far away from each other and never get to see each other face to face.
Since photo sharing is becoming so popular, it’ll be interesting to see if people will ever quit printing photos and go all digital photos. Will one day everyone have those digital photo frames all over their houses playing instead of pictures in frames? It seems like that will never happen or be a long time from now, and that might be.

History in the Making

I was sitting around the other night, just thinking about when people will be learning about history of our day now. When we learn about history there are so many artifacts, physical items, and other random objects we find to put together to figure out history. There have been many diaries found in the past to help us figure out the history of many people and their time periods. Now days, not as many people keep diaries, especially in little journals or notebooks. More people post their feelings or what they are doing online.
What I was thinking was that, maybe someday someone who is a historian will be searching the web and going back to Xanga, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and all those social networking sites to research people from different time eras. From the comments and posts they would be able to figure out what the popular trends were, such as clothing, concerts, foods, movies, music, and much more. Also, sites such as Facebook will have an extreme amount of pictures for evidence and a clearer understanding of what it was like “back in our day”.
I am not a history buff by any means, but I do find it interesting to see how much information people will be able to pull from these sites in the future. Who knows, maybe you could be in your grandkids text book someday from what you said or pictures from a social networking site you were on.
Speaking of pictures on these types of sites, and all the pictures parents posts of their kids these days, it would be interesting to see the kids’ reactions when they grow up and see all the embarrassing pictures of themselves online. Also, for them to read the comments that their parent’s friends post on pictures of them.
There is definitely a lot of communicating through these sites and will continue to be as there will become more and more out there in the near future. History is being made each and every day on these sites! So for all of your friends that are the ones who update their status every two hours, they will be the ones that help historians figure out what out time was really like.

Therapy Blogging

It seems as though many people are stressed out more than ever in today’s society; whether it is because of the economy, parenting, marriage, or many other reasons. Blogging has become more popular over the past few years than ever before and can be used for therapy. Tons of people use blogging as a kind of therapy for themselves. In a sense this can be a good thing and it can also not be.
Blogging your feelings can be a great way to get stressful thoughts off your mind. Sometimes people just need to get their thoughts out and not keep them bottled up and blogging is the best way for them to do it. Especially, for those who do not like to share their feelings verbally or have a hard time sharing what they are feeling with others. This way they can just type away their feelings on their blogs. In addition receiving comments from others, even if they do not know them they still make them feel a sense of acceptance.
The part that scares me about blogging for therapy is that sometimes people may share way too much information at the time of blogging and not realize it until later when it comes back and haunts them. It may have been a good idea at the time to type it in their blog, but after they cleared their mind and are stress free they may forget about everything they put out for the world to see. Some people share their whole life stories in their blogs and that is one thing you do not want to do on the internet.
In this article, Blogging as Therapy it shares how blogging can be helpful therapy to some. Blogging is not just complaining about how one’s life is so horrible or writing day to day activities, but something more sometimes. When reading some people’s blogs it seems that way sometimes, that they are just seeking attention. When really maybe they are seeking help and trying to get some stress off their chest in a way of getting their feelings out by posting blogs.

Social Networking Taking Over Communication Skills

Social networking is taking over the world. Before Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and many other social networking sites came out, we as a society would gather for block parties and get together with friends that we had not seen for awhile more. Now, we feel more connected to those people through social networking sites, such as the ones listed above. It is not a bad thing that we have the advantage to instantly talk with them more often, but that does put an effect on us getting together with them more often. The fact that we have the advantage at the tip of our fingertips to keep in touch with friends and loved ones is amazing how far we have come with technology, but we need to make sure it does not put a damper on our communication skills.
It is so easy to just post a quick memo on someone’s Facebook wall or send them a message when you need to let them know something or you have a question for them, instead of calling them. In a message or post you are more likely to just get to the point and ask what you want instead of like on the phone. On the phone it is very easy to rack up an hour conversation with someone, when you called to ask one simple question. I feel that on social networking sites, people sometimes do not communicate as much as they did before all these sites came out.
There is a flip side, though I believe too. Such sites as Facebook and others is not always a bad thing. They do let people find long lost friends and relatives and keep in touch with them, which is a great thing. I am guilty of using social networking sites more often than calling people as much. An example would be telling someone happy birthday. I used to call people to tell them that, now I just write it and maybe a little message on their wall. Social networking is great to use as long as it is used in moderation.

Webcams Influence in Communication

Have you ever thought about how the world’s communication skills and ways are changing ever so quickly, everyday?! Webcams are just one way to make communicating easier and more effective with the live video picture. They already have classes via webcams in some schools, called itv classrooms. I have never taken a class like this, but know people who have and I would think it would be hard for me to concentrate in a class like this.
Skype is used by so many people today to keep in touch with loved ones and to also meet new people. It is a great way to keep in touch with people who live across the country or even world. I have friends who are overseas for the guard and being able to see and talk with them just makes the whole situation a little better. Talking with my sister and 2 year old niece who just live in St. Paul, MN is very nice, because even though the cities is not that far away I do not get there every weekend and my little niece is constantly growing and learning new things. The only problem I have with communicating over webcams is that after having access to communicate like that with people who live far from us, will it effect how much we really get to see them? For instance, I get to see my 2 year old little niece on the webcam; I could easily just keep pushing off going to visit because I can constantly see her and talk to her whenever on the webcam.
Another interesting fact about webcams I found was more and more people are doing job interviews on them. Inovahire.com is just one of many sites that offer this. They offer recorded interviews, in which you can prerecord yourself answering the questions they give you ahead of time and send it to whatever company you are applying to. There are also, live interviews, in which you meet at a certain time with someone from the company who will conduct a live interview with you via webcam.

Text Messaging

First, cell phones were the new big thing and after calling people on cell phones was not good enough, then came texting. Millions of people use texting today, more than calling people. I am guilty of texting a lot more now than ever before. Texting has its positives and negatives just like everything else in the world.
Starting with some advantages of texting, it is a silent way of communicating. Therefore, you can be at a basketball game and instead of screaming into the phone to try and get the other person to hear you, you can just send them a quick text with no noise problems. The privacy of text messages is pretty safe for the most part, unless people are going through your phone and looking at your text messages. Another advantage is you can send out mass messages of texts, instead of calling each person individually, Depending on the conversation, texting can be an easy and quick way to communicate. Obviously, if you are going to be asking a bunch of questions and making a lot of decisions then, you might just want to call the person.

As with everything there are disadvantages it seems. Some disadvantages of texting is when the person sitting next to you in class or at a movie is texting away the whole time, it is annoying and rude. Text messages can be totally misunderstood. Some people may understand some words to have different meanings than what you are implying. Also, you do not get the full effect of what emotion or tone the person is using in their message like you do if you are on the phone or face to face with them. Texting while driving is the worst I feel. It is scary to think of how many people are texting while driving when you are driving on those same roads as them and they are not paying attention to driving because they are texting. Texting while driving can lead to serious accidents and possibly even death sometimes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDlYSPVro0Q Here is a link with a story of a girl who has only had her license for a few months and it shares the damages she has already done while texting and driving.

facebook issues

Facebook is a social networking site that gives you a way to keep in touch with friends and family. You can also meet new people through it. There are so many opportunities while using facebook, such as joining groups, sharing photos, and even selling items you no longer want. Facebook can be overwhelming at first with all of the different applications so here is a video explaining how to use facebook. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5gtN16gOr8.
The number one thing to remember while using this application is to watch what and how much information you are putting on your site. It is a great tool if used correctly and not taken advantage of by others. Unfortunately, there are creeps out in the world that will “stalk” people if they have a lot of information on their profiles.
Another problem while using facebook is all of the pictures that get posted. This is a big problem with high school and college kids, and also some adults. Obviously, if you do not want a picture of you on facebook doing it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it, such as drinking or drugs. So many people get in trouble by having those types of pictures up. In the job market, you definitely do not want those pictures up while searching for a job. Even if you control who sees your facebook profile. Just like word of mouth gets around so do pictures and other information on from the web.
Kids and adults these days are suing facebook for privacy issues, such as sharing information that they put on their profiles. The web has been around long enough now; that everyone should know that nothing put out on the web is completely safe. So I do not recommend anyone putting their whole life stories in blogs or every move they make on their statuses. In this website, it is an article about the most recent lawsuits against facebook. It is sad that a networking site cannot totally be trusted, but you are the only one who is responsible for putting out your own information. Unless you have others who are trying to blackmail and get you into trouble, then you have a whole different issue to deal with. So just remember, think twice about what you put on your profile!