iPhone, Chipmunking, gPhone

This article does a great job of explaining each of the above devices and or terms then comparing them.  The article is written in very plain language so even I can understand and comprehend the useful information.

MacBook Air may not be as awesome as everyone thinks

The MacBook Air, Apples new laptop may not be what everyone hoped it would be.  They claim that the MacBook Air is the thinnest laptop you can get, however the article says that in 1997 the Mitsubishi laptop was a hair thinner.  The engineering of the laptop is great, however because it’s such a specialized product it won’t be used as much according to the article. 

Downfalls:

The Air only has room for one USB port. Doesn’t include a built-in optical drive, FireWire, Ethernet, or mobile broadband. Apple refuses to outfit the Air with a media-card reader or an expansion card slot.

Pluses:

Lightweight. Big screen. People who live near Wi-Fi hot spots with little need of wired connectivity.

Newsclipper

The news site Newsclipper brings together news video clips from Websites like FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC and so on.  The site is so easy to use and easily navigated categorizing videos from most recent and most viewed.  You can create playlists and categorize the videos how you want to.  However there is a controversy about embedded videos to the site, check out the article for more details.

Twitter Bots

A Twitter Bot is like an IM bot.  You send a message and get one back, but with the Twitter Bot you can do that on any site (i.e. Facebook).  The newest Twitter Bot launched last week is the stock quote bot.   The bot seems easy to use.

Web fails in China

Unbeknownst to me Yahoo, Google, and Facebook apparently are not prevelant in China.  The Western companies failed miserably to sustain its position in Asia.  The failure is largely due to design issues. 

The article talks about how Chinese sites fill up the white spaces on webpages with lots of “bling bling” and information so therefore they see Google as too simplified and I’m guessing not too impressive.  This layout makes the Chinese think it has nothing to offer. 

UnLtdWorld

UnLtdWorld is a newly launched social networking tool that takes a very direct approach to crowdsourcing, for the provision of resources amongst users.  UnLtdWorld is basically an entire network based on resources. 

The site is meant to promt activism in the social networking world, however when you visit the site it looks nothing more than a resource site. 

RSS feeds

According to online statistics from eMarketer, less than 20% of internet users intentionally read content with the aid of an RSS reader.  Interestingly enough even frequent users don’t know what that seemingly familiar orange emblem really means and the function it performs.  In this article they claim that RSS feeds will “eclipse” email as the consumers choice for opt-in messaging. 

I personally have found RSS feeds very helpful and I notice them now everyone! It’s funny that I didn’t before my IMS class.  I will continue to use RSS feeds even when I am finished with the course.  I can’t believe I’m actually ahead of some of the technology savvy world.

On the TOPIC of Topicle

Google has offered a new human-powered search start up in Topicle.  The company was started last year and just went live yesterday (March 10).  The system relies heavily on Google and appears to be easy to use.  Instead of writing articles and compiling sources, you instead list a set of URLs relevent to the keywords you’re creating a ‘Topicle’ for. 

 I’m not too sure about this.  I feel like this would really limit and narrow your search.  But I suppose for some a smaller search is desired.

Pakistan Blocks YouTube

The country of Pakistan has blocked access to YouTube due to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared on the Danish newspaper last year.  Islamic religious law says that no one can make a visual representation of Mohammaed, and when cartoons appeared in a Danish newspaper a year ago it showed his turban replaced by a bomb.  A year later the newspaper revisted the issue and set off new problems. 

Apparently a lot of countries have joined the trend of blocking YouTube.  I wonder if the United States would ever go this far.  I doubt it considering it’s free speech and free press.  There are already a number of videos on YouTube that could be banned worthy, so therefore I don’t think the United States would go as far as to block YouTube from the country. 

Web 2.0 Security

Web 2.0 has become very popular in the past couple of years to describe the second generation of the World Wide Web.  Web 2.0 focuses on collaboration and community based sharing.  Web 2.0 is a place for people to create, collaborate and share their own content.  Blogs, Wikis, Photos, and videos are all examples of this.

However there is a downfall to this seemingly great new thing. Because anyone and everyone can upload content, Web 2.0 is an easy target for hackers to input malicious codes and inappropriate content.  Web 2.0 is also more susceptible to external threats because they have more interactions with the browser.

An even bigger problem to the beginner user is that many of these websites are considered “safe” or “trusted” by URL filtering and are not blocked even though these websites might contain malicious code.