Friday, August 3, 2007
quick post
I was looking on my facebook account and Alec Couros has added a link to a support blogging wiki. I thought I would add it on my blog to help spread the word
interesting feeds
There are so many good ideas and thoughts out there and I love the idea of this one. http://thinklab.typepad.com/think_lab/2007/08/on-the-road.html#comments Travelling around in a RV for a month with students and teachers. Exploring the country where you live by taking the backroads, eating healthy and bonding/fighting with other students/teachers. I would sign on to this project. It reminds me of my time spent in Katimavik. http://www.katimavik.org/section/index/id/1 This program was instramental in my discovering the joys of teaching, helping to adjust to living with others, team work, responsiblities, and budgeting.
I love the idea of taking time during the school year to explore. Working, travelling, and being in close proximaty with others is a learning process that can not be gained by any traditional school. So much could be learned and discovered... possiblities are endless.
I love the idea of taking time during the school year to explore. Working, travelling, and being in close proximaty with others is a learning process that can not be gained by any traditional school. So much could be learned and discovered... possiblities are endless.
collaborative project
Well I joined the touring cities collaborative project yesterday. I thought it was a really good idea. Being able to share pictures and information about places you live and have been. This project I can see growing and growing. There are so many little towns and places that not many people know about. This will give those places more attention as well as will provide valuable information for people looking to travel. http://citytours.wetpaint.com/
Time
I finally have time and internet access to read some of my RSS feeds. I was looking though and found this blog very interesting. http://thinklab.typepad.com/think_lab/2007/08/which-story-cat.html
In essence it asks what story catches your attention. I would really like to know which story does get the most attention. They are all very interesting stories but the story that caught my attention the most was "e-Learning market predicted to top $52 billion by 2010" http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21046 This one caught my attention just because I take alot of online classes and didn't realize that the market was so large for e-learning. I actually think that expected number will be even high than that. With e-learning being so accessable and easy to fit into scheduling many undergraduate degrees will be gained this way.
In essence it asks what story catches your attention. I would really like to know which story does get the most attention. They are all very interesting stories but the story that caught my attention the most was "e-Learning market predicted to top $52 billion by 2010" http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21046 This one caught my attention just because I take alot of online classes and didn't realize that the market was so large for e-learning. I actually think that expected number will be even high than that. With e-learning being so accessable and easy to fit into scheduling many undergraduate degrees will be gained this way.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
face book
Facebook is it good or bad???
Here is an article that I found while browsing.
Alarm over Facebook predators
Email Print Normal font Large font Saved July 31, 2007 - 4:28PM
Page 1 of 2 | Single page
Facebook came under fire on Monday from a state attorney general who accused the fast-growing social networking site of falling short in protecting young users from sexual predators on its site.
Facebook came under fire on Monday from a state attorney general who accused the fast-growing social networking site of falling short in protecting young users from sexual predators on its site.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in an interview his office had learned of "at least three" convicted sex offenders on Facebook's site and that may be the "tip of the iceberg."
"These individuals are using their real names after convictions for felony sexual offenses," Blumenthal told Reuters. "There may be thousands or hundreds of thousands using aliases or false identities who have never been convicted."
The state official said Facebook appears to suffer some of the dangers from predators and pornography that larger and more freewheeling social network site MySpace does. Last week, MySpace said it had deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders from its own service, which attracts 60 million US. visitors.
Started in 2004 by then-undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg as a socializing site for fellow Harvard University students, Facebook opened up more than a year ago to allow users of all ages to create personal profiles to share with friends.
Facebook, with privacy features encouraging members to share personal details like phone numbers, political loyalties or dating status for an approved circle of friends, has grown by more than a third to 33 million members in the past two months.
Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly said Facebook has privacy features unlike other social network sites that segment users by age, organisation and region and make it hard for adults to contact users under the age of 18.
In particular, Facebook protects users under 18 by preventing adults from contacting them if the adults are not affiliated with a specific school network, Kelly said.
Kelly acknowledged Facebook has detected sexual predators and other abusive practices on the site but said the numbers were small.
"There is a non-zero number. We have been able to handle abuses with the accountability of having a real-name culture versus a 'screen-name' culture," he said.
Kelly said Facebook had been notified Monday afternoon by the Connecticut attorney general's office of three specific profiles set up by known sex offenders and that the Palo Alto, California-based company had quickly removed these web pages.
"There is no city in existence, let alone one that has 33 million citizens, that doesn't have occasional crime," Kelly said. "The question is: Does the site make it easier or harder to commit crimes and what does it do to address them?"
Blumenthal and attorneys general from other states have been pushing for state and federal laws to require social network sites to seek age and identity verification from users as well as parental consent for minors to join such sites.
But critics of laws that rely on voluntary verification measures say there is no simple way to screen for sex offenders and kids masquerading as older users or to ensure whether parental authorization actually is given by parents or by kids pretending to be their parents.
Companies such as Facebook and MySpace are scrambling to develop technologies that automatically seek to protect underage users from predators as well as other forms of abuse including pornography and threats against individual users.
"We believe, and they (Facebook) agree, that screening out those images as well as age and identity verification are all affordable and feasible with today's technology," Blumenthal said after a meeting between his staff and Facebook on Monday.
"Their response, simply, was that they want to cooperate and do the right thing," he added.
MySpace has turned to background verification company Sentinel Tech Holding, which has co-developed the first nationwide database of convicted US sex felons to make it easy to detect offenders online. There were 600,000 registered US sex offenders as of May.
"It's when adults and kids play in the same space that things get sticky and the effectiveness of age verification seems to go out the window," Sentinel CEO and founder John Cardillo said of the dilemma facing social networks.
Kelly said Facebook has designed its site from the outset to protect users' privacy and has developed additional technologies since then to offer further protections. The company is evaluating technologies from outside vendors to help it increase its surveillance of potential predators.
"It is better to have some sort of verification on the front end and various forms of behavioral verification on the back end," Kelly said of Facebook's approach to site safety.
Reuters
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/alarm-over-facebook-predators/2007/07/31/1185647889575.html
I recently bit the bullet and signed up for a facebook account to extend my social network and link with people that I don't often see. Watch who you are adding and what you are sharing.
Here is an article that I found while browsing.
Alarm over Facebook predators
Email Print Normal font Large font Saved July 31, 2007 - 4:28PM
Page 1 of 2 | Single page
Facebook came under fire on Monday from a state attorney general who accused the fast-growing social networking site of falling short in protecting young users from sexual predators on its site.
Facebook came under fire on Monday from a state attorney general who accused the fast-growing social networking site of falling short in protecting young users from sexual predators on its site.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in an interview his office had learned of "at least three" convicted sex offenders on Facebook's site and that may be the "tip of the iceberg."
"These individuals are using their real names after convictions for felony sexual offenses," Blumenthal told Reuters. "There may be thousands or hundreds of thousands using aliases or false identities who have never been convicted."
The state official said Facebook appears to suffer some of the dangers from predators and pornography that larger and more freewheeling social network site MySpace does. Last week, MySpace said it had deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders from its own service, which attracts 60 million US. visitors.
Started in 2004 by then-undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg as a socializing site for fellow Harvard University students, Facebook opened up more than a year ago to allow users of all ages to create personal profiles to share with friends.
Facebook, with privacy features encouraging members to share personal details like phone numbers, political loyalties or dating status for an approved circle of friends, has grown by more than a third to 33 million members in the past two months.
Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly said Facebook has privacy features unlike other social network sites that segment users by age, organisation and region and make it hard for adults to contact users under the age of 18.
In particular, Facebook protects users under 18 by preventing adults from contacting them if the adults are not affiliated with a specific school network, Kelly said.
Kelly acknowledged Facebook has detected sexual predators and other abusive practices on the site but said the numbers were small.
"There is a non-zero number. We have been able to handle abuses with the accountability of having a real-name culture versus a 'screen-name' culture," he said.
Kelly said Facebook had been notified Monday afternoon by the Connecticut attorney general's office of three specific profiles set up by known sex offenders and that the Palo Alto, California-based company had quickly removed these web pages.
"There is no city in existence, let alone one that has 33 million citizens, that doesn't have occasional crime," Kelly said. "The question is: Does the site make it easier or harder to commit crimes and what does it do to address them?"
Blumenthal and attorneys general from other states have been pushing for state and federal laws to require social network sites to seek age and identity verification from users as well as parental consent for minors to join such sites.
But critics of laws that rely on voluntary verification measures say there is no simple way to screen for sex offenders and kids masquerading as older users or to ensure whether parental authorization actually is given by parents or by kids pretending to be their parents.
Companies such as Facebook and MySpace are scrambling to develop technologies that automatically seek to protect underage users from predators as well as other forms of abuse including pornography and threats against individual users.
"We believe, and they (Facebook) agree, that screening out those images as well as age and identity verification are all affordable and feasible with today's technology," Blumenthal said after a meeting between his staff and Facebook on Monday.
"Their response, simply, was that they want to cooperate and do the right thing," he added.
MySpace has turned to background verification company Sentinel Tech Holding, which has co-developed the first nationwide database of convicted US sex felons to make it easy to detect offenders online. There were 600,000 registered US sex offenders as of May.
"It's when adults and kids play in the same space that things get sticky and the effectiveness of age verification seems to go out the window," Sentinel CEO and founder John Cardillo said of the dilemma facing social networks.
Kelly said Facebook has designed its site from the outset to protect users' privacy and has developed additional technologies since then to offer further protections. The company is evaluating technologies from outside vendors to help it increase its surveillance of potential predators.
"It is better to have some sort of verification on the front end and various forms of behavioral verification on the back end," Kelly said of Facebook's approach to site safety.
Reuters
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/alarm-over-facebook-predators/2007/07/31/1185647889575.html
I recently bit the bullet and signed up for a facebook account to extend my social network and link with people that I don't often see. Watch who you are adding and what you are sharing.
Yahoo
My class today deals with current issues and policies. My teacher gave me this article to examine and I found it extremely interesting. It really makes a person think about what is discrimination and what is protection.
God is fine, but internet users take the name of Allah in vain
Email Print Normal font Large font By Nick O'Malley and agencies
February 27, 2006
YAHOO! has changed its rules on the words it allows in email addresses after a man discovered he could not register an account because his surname contained the word Allah.
Ed Callahan said he tried to establish the email account with the internet portal in the US after his mother, who has the same surname, could not get one.
He discovered that email addresses with other religious words were allowed, but not those that included Allah.
"On one level this is just silliness. But we have a war on terrorism and it's migrating to be a war on Muslims - this just shows the confusion there is between the two and how pervasive this is," Mr Callahan told the online journal The Register.
The incident has become a talking point on technology blogs. Many engaged in the debate have noted that Yahoo! was at the forefront of a recent campaign to keep the internet free of Government censorship in the US.
Yahoo! now says it has changed its policy to allow the word. In a written statement, the company defended the previous policy as an attempt to protect users from hateful speech.
"A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s terms of service," the statement said.
Another internet user with the letters of Allah in his online name, "Kallahar", claims to have tested Yahoo!'s system before it was changed to see which other words were banned. God was allowed, but Allah was banned; Bin Laden was banned, but "terrorist" was allowed.
Mr Callahan, who set up a webpage in protest at what he saw as discrimination against Muslims on behalf of Yahoo, has a new email address which includes the phrase "alla is in Callahan".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/god-is-fine-but-internet-users-take-the-name-of-allah-in-vain/2006/02/26/1140888748193.html
So is it right to block certain names to protect themselves from having inappropriate material posted? Or is it just plain discrimination?
God is fine, but internet users take the name of Allah in vain
Email Print Normal font Large font By Nick O'Malley and agencies
February 27, 2006
YAHOO! has changed its rules on the words it allows in email addresses after a man discovered he could not register an account because his surname contained the word Allah.
Ed Callahan said he tried to establish the email account with the internet portal in the US after his mother, who has the same surname, could not get one.
He discovered that email addresses with other religious words were allowed, but not those that included Allah.
"On one level this is just silliness. But we have a war on terrorism and it's migrating to be a war on Muslims - this just shows the confusion there is between the two and how pervasive this is," Mr Callahan told the online journal The Register.
The incident has become a talking point on technology blogs. Many engaged in the debate have noted that Yahoo! was at the forefront of a recent campaign to keep the internet free of Government censorship in the US.
Yahoo! now says it has changed its policy to allow the word. In a written statement, the company defended the previous policy as an attempt to protect users from hateful speech.
"A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s terms of service," the statement said.
Another internet user with the letters of Allah in his online name, "Kallahar", claims to have tested Yahoo!'s system before it was changed to see which other words were banned. God was allowed, but Allah was banned; Bin Laden was banned, but "terrorist" was allowed.
Mr Callahan, who set up a webpage in protest at what he saw as discrimination against Muslims on behalf of Yahoo, has a new email address which includes the phrase "alla is in Callahan".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/god-is-fine-but-internet-users-take-the-name-of-allah-in-vain/2006/02/26/1140888748193.html
So is it right to block certain names to protect themselves from having inappropriate material posted? Or is it just plain discrimination?
social networking
I was reading the paper on the train and found this article about Piracy hits high note. I can't find the article online so I will type away.
"Social networks are changing the way people consume music at a time when piracy is on the rise.
Apple today boasted it had sold more than 3 billion songs at its iTunes online store.
But researchers said the growth of legal downloads had slowed and industry players had to adapt or watch profits fade.
A survey by Entertainment Media Research found that more than 50 percent of people surfed social networking sites to find music.
A further 30 percent said they went to buy or download music they had discovered on a social network site.
On popular sites such as MySpace and Bebo, the numbers of people who use sites to find music rises to about 75 percent.
John Enser, head of music at the law firm Olswang that coauthored the survey, said social networking sites represented a new platform for the music industry.
"Discovering music is widespread with the latest generation of consumers, but the process of actually purchasing the music needs to be made easier," he said.
The survey found music was increasinly key to social networks.
The number of people claining they illegally downloaded music tracks had risen and legal downloading was in decline.
Russell Hart, chief executive of Entertainment Media Research , said the findings represented a new era of "democratisation" in the way consumbers interacted with music and artists.
"Social networks are fundementally changing the way we discover purchase and use music," he said."
This article was interesting because it touched alot on what we have been discussing in our ECMP455 class. We have been talking about social networking as being the key to the future. Sharing each others work and learning new ways to teach and explore. I never thought of finding music on someone elses network. But if information is being shared I guess everything else is being shared as well.
"Social networks are changing the way people consume music at a time when piracy is on the rise.
Apple today boasted it had sold more than 3 billion songs at its iTunes online store.
But researchers said the growth of legal downloads had slowed and industry players had to adapt or watch profits fade.
A survey by Entertainment Media Research found that more than 50 percent of people surfed social networking sites to find music.
A further 30 percent said they went to buy or download music they had discovered on a social network site.
On popular sites such as MySpace and Bebo, the numbers of people who use sites to find music rises to about 75 percent.
John Enser, head of music at the law firm Olswang that coauthored the survey, said social networking sites represented a new platform for the music industry.
"Discovering music is widespread with the latest generation of consumers, but the process of actually purchasing the music needs to be made easier," he said.
The survey found music was increasinly key to social networks.
The number of people claining they illegally downloaded music tracks had risen and legal downloading was in decline.
Russell Hart, chief executive of Entertainment Media Research , said the findings represented a new era of "democratisation" in the way consumbers interacted with music and artists.
"Social networks are fundementally changing the way we discover purchase and use music," he said."
This article was interesting because it touched alot on what we have been discussing in our ECMP455 class. We have been talking about social networking as being the key to the future. Sharing each others work and learning new ways to teach and explore. I never thought of finding music on someone elses network. But if information is being shared I guess everything else is being shared as well.
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