Fbook, Teens, and Tweens

In my Resources for Young Adults class, we've talked about cyberbullying and social network use by young adults (together, and as two separate topics).  The issue of lying about age to open a Facebook account is interesting, especially when parents condone that behavior.  This article talks about how many children under the age of 13 are using Facebook.  Duh.  It does discuss several ways to deal with this.  One option is to open Facebook to younger users and increase safety measures.  Critics say that this will increase cyberbullying.  Another opinion is that parents should exert more responsibility for encouraging children to not open social media accounts. 

I'm not sure what the answer is, but blaming parents seems silly.  In a more heated discussion in my class, several classmates implied that when parents allow their children to lie about their age online, the next step is underage drinking and lying about age in that context.  That view seems extreme, especially when parents discuss the context with their children.

Net Neutrality According to Sir Tim

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, aka "inventor of the web" (according to this article) advocates net neutrality as self-enforced by the internet industry.  If this doesn't happen (because why would it?), Sir Tim believes that governments should enforce the whole net neutrality thing by creating laws to ensure that all traffic on the internet continues to be treated equally. 

There are some sticky issues about involving the government in regulating internet traffic.  It could potentially act as a kind of slippery slope type situation where the government then begins to interfere with other kinds of internet use. 

Another interesting point made by Sir Tim is that internet access is "now becoming a human right."  This statement seems shortsighted and slightly ignorant of the fact that computer and internet access is often a privilege of Western, developed countries.  What about the millions of people who have never even used a computer?  Huh, Sir Tim? 

Chrome

While Redditing, I came across this article several clicks in.  It discusses why Google, after its reorganization, is allocating so much money to the development of Chrome.  Chrome, as a free product, doesn't increase revenue for Google.  The chances of it seriously undercutting Internet Explorer anytime soon are minimal.  However, according to Matt Rusoff (author), by improving Chrome, Google stays abreast of what's happening the the browser world.  As Chrome increases in popularity, Google has more say in browser standards as well.  When IE absolutely dominated the browser market, web developers catered to IE.  As Firefox and Chrome both become more popular, web developers turn their attention to these as well.  No longer will IE dominate! 

I have been using Firefox for a long time, and I'm just not sure about Chrome yet.  However, I like that Google is making Chrome a priority, for the sake of our children's browsing.

Armchair Activism.. Another Use for Fb!

This article talks about armchair activism, or activism by updating social media profiles to spread awareness about a particular issue.  According to Haley Robinson, the author, people believe that by tweeting or posting cryptic messages in their Facebook status, or changing a profile picture to something related to a cause, they are raising awareness about their particular issue.  Robinson believes that this is lazy activism that rarely results in greater awareness, discussions, or behavior changes that support a cause.  Instead, they raise awareness at a "minimal level".  Instead, to effectively advocate for a cause, Robinson recommends going out and doing something.  This can be donating money, or raising money. 

I found this to be another example of how passive and distanced people can be with social media.  In a way, it is hiding behind these web 2.0 technologies in order to not actually do something.  By sending your friend a message via Facebook, you don't have to actually talk to that friend.  By showing your support via Facebook, you don't have to do anything proactive that actually supports the organization.  On the other hand, lots of interesting social movement things have been happening thanks to these technologies.

More Google Alternatives

Awhile ago I posted about Blekko as an interesting alternative to Google.  Ok, cool.  But wait!  I found this article that lists several other alternatives to Google as well, in addition to Blekko.  Even cooler.  Obviously, Google is the easiest option for a quick search.  It's also probably the best option for most people who aren't willing to spend time figuring out how to use these other search engines.  Google is also best for people who think that Google is the Internet.

Anyway, Kevin Purdy (author) suggests several other search engines for specific search needs.  He recommends DuckDuckGo for absolutely anonymous searches, as well as programming searches and for searching sites.  Purdy recommends Blekko for very specific searches, or for avoiding many of the ad-filled sites that may come up through Google.  Then there is Wolfram Alpha for... lots of stuff.  Wolfram Alpha can retrieve computations like percentages and statistics by finding data sets and computing answers from them.  Again, another one that you'll have to experiment with before it's your go-to search engine.

Look out, Google?  Nah, it's still dominating the world.

A New "Save" Icon

About a month ago, as I was instructing the beginner computer class at the library where I intern, one of the (older) students asked why the "save" icon looked like it did.  I had not thought about that until he pointed it out: we use a now almost-obsolete image to represent one of the more important functions in many software programs.  Then I came across this article about the very same topic!  David Friedman discusses why we should use a different icon to symbolize saving a document/file/whatever.  He proposes that we use a home base as the icon to symbolize that the document/file/whatever is safe.  It would then become increasingly dirty as the document/file/whatever went longer without being saved.

As many commentators on this article suggest, baseball is only really popular here in the US, so the symbol would largely be lost on most of the world (like the floppy symbol may be lost on young'uns or anyone just starting to use computers).  Personally, I think the floppy is cute, and there are tons of symbols that aren't directly relevant to their use.  I do like the idea of the symbol, whatever it may be, changing as it becomes less safe.

Amazon in the Clouds

In addition to everything else, Amazon is launching an online cloud storage service, according to Rachel Metz in the article Amazon Launches Online Media Storage Service.  This service will take two forms: storage for files (video, music, photos) that users upload and store on Amazon's servers.  The second form is for music that users have uploaded to their computers or Android smartphones.  This article also states that both Google and Apple are working on similar projects.

Currently, Amazon is offering 5 gigabytes of storage to current account holders--something like a teaser to hook customers and get them to buy more storage.  Customers can purchase 20 gigabytes for a $20 annual fee.  This is cheaper (initially) than an external hard drive and more convenient.  However, I do worry about the information being held by a company, so I'm interested in the privacy aspect.  I'm also interested in how the information can be removed from the storage space once people decide to stop using the service.

Pretty cool, though.