About the class: You Gatta take this class if you like blogging

The class is really fun. You get to know a lot of new ideas and use new tools like blogging, Google docs and other helpful websites. Also you have a chance to make presentation about anything you like if it is related to the course. We learned great information from other students who did presentations in this class.

The professor is really good and she has a lot of working experience so you can get benefits from her lectures as she talked from experiences. She is always there if you need a help and she is very clear and her lectures are very interesting. One of the best thing about this class is the guest speakers. I just love their presentations. She asked very professional and intelligent people to come and gave us a short presentation and they are just great.

The only thing that I do not like in the class that you have to participate a lot. It is not bad for most people but for my I just do not like to talk in classes.

I would recommend you to take this class and I'm sure you will enjoy it.

Take him down by a text message

It is very interesting to me how the Philippines managed to arrange peaceful demonstrations, that bring down a government, by using text messaging (SMART MOBS). This really shows how the technology can be really powerful if it is used in the right way. I think what they did was great and very intelligent. They gave great example if simple affected it solution.

On the other hand, Dean’s party lost the election cause they somehow did not manage to use the technology correctly ( NAKED CONVERSATION). Using blog was great idea but it lead to incorrect information which lead them to guarantee a victory that never happened. In this example and also the example of some websites indicated that visitors who use Firefox are 4% higher than those who use IE while the truth that much more people are using IE than Firefox.

In these to example, I found that technology could lead to success and in the same time could lead to failure. It always depends on the users and how well they use it.

Please DO NOT sue me

Last week lecture was really great. I really like the guest speaker and I agree with most of what he said.

He mentiond that a person can be sued for something that he wrote about a company or about a person. For me the whole sueing isuue is really wierd. Sometimes, I afraid one day someone might sue me for no good reason.

Since a lot of people are getting so much money from these cases, I believe this issue would never end. I recieved an email of one of my friends ( found it really funny) about some law cases. I would like to share some of them with you.

SOMEONE (I wont use the name so they wont sue me) of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000. by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were
understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little
toddler was her son.

A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay A LADY of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because she had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

I just Don't get it how come these people get all that money on these cases.

who reads my sms

In “Smart Mobs” a book by Howard Rheingold, I read about how the Filipinos managed to form a protest of ten thousands of people on one street by sending this small text message “Go 2EDA, Wear blck” which means go to Estada st and wear black. This message was sent between million of manila’s residents. They bring down the government by using networks and the technology.

Now, I really wonder if text messaging is that powerful and could really make different, do government or telephone companies filter these messages to prevent future act or to notify to authorities about protests or actions planned by some group by using this technology. Do some dictators in the world put some control in such messages? Do we really message freely or there are some consequences of sending some messages.

goOoal

I just love Upoc idea. I think it is great and excellent service. As I read in “SMART MOBS” the service helped a lot of people during the 9-11 attack by sending fast messages to subscribers.
In my country, soccer is very big thing. Last year. The soccer clubs their provided similar service. You subscribe to your team channel by sending a text message to a phone number and you pay them with your cell phone’s bill. They send to you the club news and live result and whatever the managements is planning to do. This service becomes very popular that almost every one who like soccer subscribe in one or more channels. The idea is to get the latest news and also to support your favorite club since the club will get a portion of the money.
I think this services would grow really fast since most people do not have that much time to watch TV or to read the news paper.

Hate to answer the phone

I know a lot of people just ignore the annoying phone rings until they hear a familiar voice in the voice machine then they run to pick the phone up. All this is because the ton of advertising calls that they receive every day. The main point is that the advertising agents and businesses will still make such calls even if most of the people wont respond to them or even if they got bothered by these calls. As Shel Israel mentioned in “Naked Conversations” that these companies do not care if 98% of the people hate their call. They just care about the 2% who respond to them.
I totally agree with Israel. This kind of advertising annoying and does not work very well. One thing jumped into my mind while I was reading in the book about this point. The book mentioned that people pay money by trying to prevent such calls. This means that other parties are also benefits from such call. People buy expensive phones that recognize these calls. People also subscribe to show ID service from the telephone company mostly to avoid answering these calls. Also the fact that these companies are paying a lot of money to the telephone company so they can make the call. Also there are some companies that sell telephone numbers to advertising agencies.
Unfortunately too many parties are benefits from these calls so that I think there would be no reason for these company to stop these calls.

Free software = Slow development

First, I really like the idea of LINUX that everyone can participate in developing the OS as mentioned in the reading. The only thing that I think really slowed the development of LINUX is because it is free. Although I like to have free things, I think the developments of software would not be as developed as today if it was free service. Actually, we can see that first we have a software that Microsoft for example wrote and made available to buy, then after that people write another software that does the something that the Microsoft’s one does.
I wish that the anyone improve LINUX get some benefits or something in return for his time and effort by selling the OS for small portion of money.
I would like to connect my thoughts with what Marc A. Smith said in Smart Mobs book about collective action dilemma page 32. He gave an example that not every one watches public television sends a check. I wish it goes this way in free software or open sources style that not everyone pays for the service but at least someone is helping by donating or advertising for their services in these programs. Still I think providing the service for small portion of money would really help the development of such projects.