TED Talks is a non-profit foundation most known for its conferences. The conferences were designed to bring people together from three different worlds: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The lectures, or "ideas worth spreading", are disseminated on the Internet for everyone to enjoy.
Some of the more prominent speakers include Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, Bono, Richard Branson, James Cameron, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, and Al Gore.
News broke today on the CNN Marquee Blog that 90210's Tori Spelling got in contact with Farrah Fawcett's ghost during a psychic reading with John Edward. During a recent interview with Out Magazine, Spelling accepted Edward's invitation for a reading because she was hopeful to get in contact with her father Aaron Spelling's spirit. Instead, Farrah's spirit came through with information for Tori to give her son Redmond. The rest of the tale is chronicled in Spelling's upcoming book "Uncharted TerriTORI." How timely!
In another blog, Celebitchy, the story was approached much the way a tabloid magazine would with additional photos and gossip.
These two blogs provide examples of different approaches to celebrity news reporting. Tori's ghostly encounter is hardly news-worthy yet somehow it landed on the front page of CNN. In terms of credibility, the CNN post appears to be more trustworthy due to the reputation of CNN reporting and the overall appearance of the page. Since the Celebitchy blog gathers its news from outside sources, the information is less credible. Additionally, the overall aesthetic of the Celebitchy page is amateurish and littered with advertisements.
@U2 was created in 1996 by U2 fans to stay connected on all things U2. The music fansite was designed as an online resource containing fan blogs, news, lyrics, photos, tour info, biographies, and forums. Information comes from multiple authors such as the website authors, fan posts, and online news articles from outside resources.
As a U2 fan, I check the news page every couple of days to stay abreast on U2's activities. New posts are updated daily and some contain outside links, videos, and podcasts. I find the site to be credible since it has numerous contributors and is maintained by devoted fans. Over the past 14 years, the website has received numerous awards and recognition for being an outstanding fansite.
Since their inception in 1997, personal blogs have grown to become a clever means to communicate and facilitate discussion on a wide range of topics, thoughts, and ideas. A blog can be shared with a select few or the entire global community. For many people, a blog page allows individuals the power to express themselves. This freedom of expression helps bloggers to feel connected and validated in a world where their voice might not otherwise be heard.
For Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, expressing herself on her blog landed her in prison for 10 days.
Thirty year old Nguyen lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a city where Internet usage is growing rapidly. Currently, a third of Vietnam's population, or 24 million people, are online. However, there is a dark cloud hanging over the promise that the Internet holds and it is slowly threatening to silence the voice of the Vietnamese people.
Nguyen began her blog so that she could write about life, work, technology, kids ... the usual stuff. Trouble arose when she expressed her views against China's intervention in her country, including Beijing's financing of a controversial bauxite mine in the central highlands of Vietnam. These views ultimately led to her arrest and imprisonment for ten days last August. The government in Vietnam believed the views that Nguyen expressed were an abuse of democratic freedoms and infringed upon on the national benefit.
As a condition of her release, Nguyen agreed to give up blogging and posted a letter on her site professing her love of the country. After being denied a passport several months later and feeling like she has been labeled a criminal, Nguyen defiantly began blogging again.
"I think that they have to think about this," she said. "Because I just tell the truth ... If they arrest me again because I send a message outside to the world, I am not scared. This means that they show to (the) world that we don't have freedom like they say."
In the United States, it is easy to take for granted the freedom of speech that the Internet provides. It is hard to imagine that in Communist countries like Vietnam, China, and North Korea, one's ability to surf the web is continuously monitored and censored by the government. While the Vietnamese government claims to safeguard the country against obscene or sexually explicit content through its blocking efforts, much of the filtered sites also contain politically and religiously sensitive material that may undermine the Communist Party's hold on power. Amnesty International has reported numerous instances, such as the case of Nguyen, where Internet activists have been arrested for expressing their views online.
As technology continues to evolve and make the world ever smaller, future issues regarding one's seeming right to access and share information on the Internet will no doubt continue to come into question.
Founded December 2009, Blippy is a social media site that allows users to post and follow updates about their purchases of goods and services. Blippy is being called the “Twitter of personal finance” due to the fact that it is based upon Twitter’s open sharing model. Users of the website synch their e-commerce accounts such as iTunes, Zappos, Amazon, and eBay, in order to have online purchases automatically appear on their feed. Some users of Blippy go so far as to synch their credit card and bank accounts to the service.
The site is designed so that the “buying feed” of its users promotes their online purchases, facilitates discussion on purchases, and keep users connected by sharing new and interesting things.
Earlier this year, controversy erupted when four users of Blippy had their credit card information compromised when it was revealed in Google search results. The problem stemmed from an oversight during the company’s beta test and the raw credit card data was viewable in the HTML source. According to Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan, the data was removed but it kept showing up in the Google cache. Since the gaffe, Blippy representatives state the problem has been fixed and that newer security measures are currently in place.
Despite security risks, the idea of using social media websites to divulge personal financial information is growing. Taking the Blippy model a step further, a new site called Swipely aims to focus on the financial transactions themselves – where and what people are buying.
With new breeds of social media sites like Foursquare, Twitter, Blippy, and Swipely, the online public now has the ability to share with the world as little or as much of their spending habits as they like.
The 4C’s: Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration, and Connection
Of the four-category classification model, Blippy mainly uses the communication and connection component in their approach to social media.
Communication
~Users communicate purchases among friends and/or with the online Blippy community ~Facilitates candid discussions about purchases in an open forum (Ex. quality and satisfaction) ~Shared information keeps users up-to-date on new products and services ~Helps marketers to identify and track purchasing trends
Connection
~Personal profiles and contact information link users ~Users connect with friends and/or Blippy community ~Relationships develop between users who share similar interests in products and brands ~Specific product or brands can be tagged or searched
