iPad CD

I really can't believe this: The Gorillaz, a popular band, announced that they would be releasing a new album that would drop on Christmas, but there is one thing that makes this album different from the rest -- it was made completely on an iPad. WHAT?! When I first read this I was in shock. Not only did they use different apps, but also with virtual violins and other instruments of the sort.

Although this really has nothing to do with the web, it does tie along to the concept of the death of the web in a way. This really shows how increadible the tablets are and how popular they have become. It also shows how technology is getting to be so advanced, people don't even have to have instruments to make music! Unreal!

Since we've talked about Facebook and death, I thought it would be interesting to talk about Facebook and virtual death. I recently read an article where celebrities are making a "digital life sacrifice," or deleting their Facebook and Twitter accounts until they raise one million dollars for the Keep a Child Alive campaign which helps people who are affected by the HIV/AIDS virus. By "killing" themselves off on these social networking sites, celebrities believe that this will raise money quickly, because people are going to want to get them back online and be

able to know what's going on in their lives. The writers at HipHopRxwrote a really interesting article about the campaign, and although they believe this was done for a great cause, it could have been more successful.

I think it's so crazy how people are so intrigued by the lives of celebrities that they would basically pay money to know what they are doing. At the same time, I totally give it to the campaign leaders who thought of this idea because they know what celebrity-obsessed world we live in. If I was a huge fan of a certain celeb whose participating, like Kim Kardashian, I could totally see myself donating because after all, it is for a good cause!

Virtual Scrapbooking

While reading Perez Hilton today (instead of doing our Senior Seminar paper..), I came across something that sounded awesome. For $24 per year, the people at a company called Ninuku Archivists will take your Facebook "life" and physically document it onto PDF formated pages. By analyzing your profile, they take out personal information, pictures, wall posts and anything else you choose to share, and make sort of a biography of your life since you signed up for Facebook.
My first thought was : THIS.IS.AWESOME...and I'm suprised it took this long to think of, because if you think about it, it is a perfect way to store memories, especially since so many people post such personal information about themselves.
Here's a (very dramatic) video about the idea that Ninuku came up with (only it's from a French company)

Bullying Websites and Dr. Phil

I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation on Thursday that showed our class that it is not only children who are being bullied on the Internet, but adults as well. Back in 2008 (my sophomore year), I, as well as a large number of my friends, were victims of this new unfortunate sensation with the development of Juicy Campus. Not only did this website give people around campus a bad reputation with the made up content, but it was also a platform for cowards to flourish.
Unfortunately, Juicy Campus and College ACB are not the only websites that encourages bullying of adults. The Dirty, which is a website based out of Scottsdale and run by Nik Richie, is another popular forum for hate. On Richie's website, people post (mostly unflattering) pictures of other people, somethings even people they do not know. After the people write a story about the person to accompany the pictures, Nik puts his two cents in, usually agreeing with the submitter and engages in the bad mouthing.
With cyber bullying gaining the amount of press it has lately, it was not shocking to me that Dr. Phil would do an episode dedicated to the topic, but what was surprising is that he actually had Nik Richie as a guest on the show. To me, this was a great way to expose the horrors of bullying, and hopefully putting Richie on the spot in front of a large audience will make people realize that this is an unnecessary activity to partake in.
Of course, YouTube is being difficult and won't let me embed the video so you can just watch it on my blog, but here is a link to a part of the Dr. Phil episode talking about the responsibility of the owners of hateful websites, enjoy!

I "Like," Therefore, I'm Cool

Mackenzie's presentation today really got me thinking and quite frankly made me a little paranoid. Of course I know there are repercussions of stupid and inappropriate Facebook comments, but I really had no clue that this site could get someone in so much trouble. Isn't it common knowledge not to put your worst attributes on social networking sites (i.e.-- you smell terrible when you wake up, you shower once a week, etc.), so how can someone use the information on your page to get you in trouble if the person you present yourself as isn't a 100% accurate? I've seen it plenty of times in a variety of ways. Let's take pictures for example. I know so many girls who touch up their pictures to the point where it looks like a painting or a sort of caricature of themselves. Also, I know people who make themselves seem "bad-ass" or put things on their profiles that they THINK other people refer to as cool to make themselves look cool as well. This is all too apparent with the ability Facebook users have to "Like" something. I, personally, am not a big fan of "liking" pages, and as a matter of fact, I can count my "likes" on less than two hands..and for some people, it would take 15 hands! It makes me think do these people in all honesty really enjoy these things, or are they joining just to make other people think they are hip?
Ok, so I went off on a little rant, but what I am trying to get at is how can the government or lawyers use the information we put on our profiles as substantial evidence when it is in fact only a version of ourselves we put out for others to see. Yes, when the police see that someone wrote on a person's wall "I'm going to kill you!," and that person happens to wind up missing, they could take that completely out of context because they really do not know if that person was joking or not. Also, as Mackenzie also mentioned in her presentation, how can a judge find a parent is unfit because they flirt or write sometimes off-color things on their friend's pages? How does this determine how the parent loves and cares for a child?
Again, off on another rant, but I will leave you with this: Is Facebook a place to really get to know a person, or really get to know how a person wishes they were?

Cyberbully Is For Cowards

What happened to the days when school kids would beat each other up the old fashion way -- in the school parking lot, the park, etc. ? With the rise of technology, this society has spawned a whole new generation of bullies, most commonly known as "cyber bullies." I don't even like to use the term "bully" when referring to them, because being a bully gives off the connotation of having "guts" and and being a "bad a**." Now I am not at all praising these "old school bullies," but at least they fought their battles in person. These cyber bullies are simply cowards. They are usually the kids who got picked on by actual bullies in school, and they feel that since they are behind a computer screen, they can treat others the way they were treated, without the consequences. Cyber bullying has truly become an epidemic. I have been hearing way too frequently of young children as well as adults being bullied so bad on the Internet that they physically hurt themselves, even sometimes taking their own lives.
I recently read an article about a girl who actually lives very close to me on Long Island who took her own life after being taunted on a social networking site. Not only did this harassment lead her to take her own life, but a page that was made for her after her death as a tribute also got negative comments. How could this vicious circle continue on? It was mean messages that lead this girl to her death, and now even after her death, they keep coming. When will people learn that enough is enough?

Facebook: A Place to Broadcast Your Life?

After reading this week's assignments I started thinking -- do I know people who put too much information on their Facebook? Then it hit me -- of course I do! Nearly everyone of my Facebook "friends" puts so much information on their page, basically asking for someone to steal their identity or do some serious stalking. There is one girl in particular, I'll call her Mary, who I went to high school with who is a big fan of over sharing, whether it be changing her "relationship status" from single to it's complicated nearly every day, or putting her exact location on her status updates. Not only does she constantly update, but she loves to put new main pictures up with either one of two captions, "OMG I look gross, LOL" and "IDK if I really like this pic.." Who knows why she does this, maybe it's to get LIKES or constant notifications to her BlackBerry, but one thing is for sure -- she craves attention from her 2,000 or so "friends." Much like the girls we read about in class on Thursday, Mary defends her actions, and believes that there is nothing wrong with posting half naked pictures of herself, because after all, it is her life, and who is anyone to tell her what to do? My main concern about this is that when she is older and becomes more mature, she will realize that maybe it wasn't the greatest idea to be so forward on the Internet and put herself out there for literally everyone to see.
I came across this satirical article on The Onion and although it is just a joke, it really made a little nervous. Can anything ever truly be deleted from the Internet? I'm not saying that I have incriminating pictures of me on my Facebook, but there definitely are some pictures that are very unflattering that my friends have uploaded, and even though I "untag" them and they don't show up on my page, they are still in those albums. This makes me wonder: is it even worth it to have a Facebook page? There are many advantages to having one of course, but there are also just as many, if not more, downsides of having one. The question I want to end this post with is this: Is maintaining a Facebook page in order to feel like part of the in crowd worth risking your future self?