RSS

I have used RSS without even realizing what I was using. I have seen the RSS logo on different webpages but I did not know what exactly what it was for. At first I did not want to deal with this assignment. I was trying to ignor it and wait until it went away meaning the deadline. I did not even know where to start. I read the Wikipedia and I felt I was jusr rambling words in my mind. It could be that my brain cells are all burnt out since we are at the end of the semester . Well I started reading more about RSS and started understanding what it was about. Then came the real challenge so I thought. I was supposed to creat my own reader. It wasn't until I started reading some of the blogs that my fellow classmates posted that I became clear with what I had to do. I then chose to stay with google since I already have an account with them and since I started this class I have a whole lot more web accounts that I would have never signed up for prior to this class and so I would not go insane with another password I figured it would just be more convinient for me to stay with google since I do not have to log in when I go to google from my computer.



I first went to the wrong area I signed up for alerts and then I figured it was to easy to be true I just put in words and that was it I will get news alerts. But then I remembered about what I have researched and it said I had to just plug in the url's I wanted to get alerts from.



I still haven't figured out how to use it with blackboard but since I plan to begin writing articles this summer on a calling to get the Hispanic Community unified and immigration issues, I chose url's related to Hispanic issues and immigration and Politics. However, I have found a new passion that has left me uneasy. I want to research more on Second Life. As a future Psychologist I want to propose to Dr. Lewis from the West Campus to maybe do a research on behavior, what kind of people are spending money in a virtal world, addiction, I just have a lot of questions and curiosity. I want to explore the financial aspect, the psychological aspect, and more on the culture of the Virtual World, so I set some url's to get hot off the press information on Second life or any other virtual world.

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it (http://www.whatisrss.com/). Furthermore, RSS is an XML-based format that allows the syndication of lists of hyperlinks, along with other information, or metadata, that helps viewers decide whether they want to follow the link. This allows peoples’ computers to retrieve and understand the information, so that all of the lists they’re interested in can be tracked and personalized for them. It is a format that’s intended for use by computers on behalf of people, rather than being directly presented to them (like HTML).

RSS has gone through many changes since its inception. The first RSS was .09 which is now obsolete, then .91 came about and this has become a migration path to 2.0. RSS .92, .93, and .94 have also become obsolete. 2.0 is what is currently being used however, it is an easy migration path from the previous forms of RSS (http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/).

RSS are aware programs called news aggregators and are popular in the blogging community. News aggregators can be very helpful with a persons favorite web blogs. Furthermore, RSS is not just for news but for anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS. Pilgrim mentioned that since there are seven different formats called RSS the public needs to be liberal enough to handle allthe variations (Pilgirm).

Aggregators are the most common use of feeds, and there are several types. Web aggregators (sometimes called portals) make this view available in a Web page; Aggregators have also been integrated into e-mail clients, users’ desktops, or standalone, dedicated software.
Aggregators have many special features, that combine several related feeds into one view, hiding entries that the viewer has already seen, and putting feeds and entries into categories.
Other uses of feeds include site tracking by search engines and other software; because the feed is machine-readable, the search software doesn’t have to figure out which parts of the site are important and which parts are just the navigation and presentation (http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/).
There are many reasons to use RSS . RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter (www.whatisrss.com).

References

Webmaster. RSS Tutorial. Retrieved on 4/13/2008 from http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/

Pilgrim, M. (2002). Dive Into XML: What Is RSS. Retrieved 4/13/2008 from: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

What Is RSS? RSS Expalined. Retreived 4/13/2008 from: www.whatisrss.com

Second Life

Wow! When I first went into Second Life and created my avatar Kat Bomze I was not too impressed with the whole deal. I had lots of technical difficulties because the program kept crashing. I had lost of difficulty navigating around the virtual world. I did however, enjoy modifying my avatar character. I made it look like what I wanted to really look like such as to have a knock out body. I went into several different places but since I did not know how to control the arrows I kept getting lost in space. I would have to log out and log back in to find myself. I did meet one person that gave me some tips on how to navigate. Where I felt I got most interested in Second Life was when I began my research. I was amazed with all the information that I gathered. I have to be honest I am not the type that likes to do too much research but this time I just could not stop researching I had to literately stop myself from researching. It interested me so much. I did not realize how much money is being made in virtual real estate. As a Realtor and with the current market condition this is a great opportunity for Realtors. Imagine selling property and not having the liability. I wonder if The Virtual World will ever regulate the real estate sales? I never felt scared I just got frustrated with my computer. One spooky thing was that I was being watched as I modified my avatar and I was not aware of it. What I did do was call my brother and told him about the Virtual Real Estate Boom. I told him we need to jump on the band wagon before virtual real estate sales becomes more popular and the competition increases.

Research Section

We often let out a sigh of dissatisfaction of our current appearance. We are not able to afford that dream vacation to Hawaii or Europe and most of all many of us complain about not having enough money to pay the bills. Well Second Life gives us the opportunity to fulfill our fantasies, take our dream vacations, we can be unfaithful to our spouses without feeling guilty about it and or running the risk of getting some STD, but most of all we can make real money selling intangible items in a virtual world! Items such as virtual real estate is being sold, there are large corporations holding trainings in cyber space, and there even a stock market. However as in real life Second Life is no crime free. In the near future the virtual world may be what get this country out of recession.

We are not able to afford a dream vacation but through Second Chance we can travel the world for free, we can create our own vacation and buy our own dream home for as little as $20.00. We can create an avatar which is a an on screen character that we can customize to our liking. We can go into night clubs and have affairs with one two or three different people and fulfill our fantasies and nobody will judge you. We can be free to express ourselves.

However, greater than those frivolous things mentioned there is a greater opportunity in Second Life, there is money to be made. Second Life gets 10 million members that pay $15.00 a month to play and another 20 million members login occasionally. There is an online currency exchange (Hof, Robert).

Although in the real world the real estate market is going from bad to worse and we do not for see it getting better, in the virtual world real estate is booming. People are selling and renting land for others to create. Coldwell Banker is one of the biggest real estate companies in the world and they have opened a virtual office in Second chance. Coldwell Banker bought a great amount of property then subdivided it into 520 individual homes that half will be sold and half will be to rent. Their virtual offices are staffed by real people where they are not only selling the virtual land but they are also answering real life real estate transactions to the consumers. With the real estate market crash many consumers have been left with a bittersweet attitude towards Realtors because they feel they were not represented properly by their agents and have lost the trust of the Realtor. By Coldwell Banker being out in cyberspace they are not only getting the exposure worldwide but when the market picks up again chances are they may be the first company many consumers will go to for their real estate needs (Kirkpatrick, David).

Many large companies such as, American Express, Intel, Wal-Mart, and many other large corporations are holding trainings and investments in Second Life (Hof, Robert). Furthermore, Second Life has its own World Stock Exchange. The virtual stock exchange opened in real life simulated stock exchange on March 5 2007. The trading volume surpasses 23 million virtual dollars which is the equivalent to $90,000 US dollars. At that time the exchange rate was 290 to 1 (Crosman, Penny).

Like the real world the virtual world is not crime free. Greed prevails everywhere, There was a banking meltdown in which many consumers lost a great amount of real money through fraudulent banks. As a result Linden Lab had to abruptly close down all the banks and evict them from the cyber world. The only banks that can operate in Second Life are banks that can show proof of an applicable government regulation statement or a financial institution charter (Talbot, David). Moreover, the World Stock Exchange suffered a loss of L$32 million, ($12,300 dollars) on July 25 of 2007. A former employee of Linden Lab took advantage of the classified information that he or she had access to and broke into the ATM network (Reuters, Adam).

It is interesting that people do not have money to pay their bills in the real world and they have money to spend in a virtual world. For this reason precisely that the virtual world may be the solution to stabilize the nations economy. Second Life does not only get people from the United States investing but from all over the world. If the person wants to chance their linden dollars for real US Dollars they are subject to taxation from the IRS (Wond).

References

Crosman, Penny. (2007). Stock Exchange Opens In Second Life: retrieved 4/6/2008 from http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/blog/archives/2007/03/virtual_stock_e.html

Hof, Robert. (2006). My Virtual Life: retrieved 4/6/2008 from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm

Krikpatrick, David. (2007). Coldwell Bankers Second Life: retrieved 4/6/2008 from http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/22/technology/fastforward_secondlife.fortune/index.htm

Reuters, Adam. (2007). World Stock Exchange Hit By L$32 Million In Theft: retrieved 4/6/20008 from http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/07/25/world-stock-exchange-hit-by-l32-million-theft/

Talbot, David. (2008). Second Life Closes Banks: retrieved 4/6/2008 from http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20037/

Wong, Grace. (2007). Second Life's Looming tax Threat: retrieved 4/6/2007 from http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/02/technology/sl_taxes/index.htm

Links for Flicker

Web 2.0

It is amazing how web 2.0 being such a popular tool to bring the world together and yet so many people are not even aware of what it. They may know what youtube is, or flicker, but they do not know the history and the importance of this new technilogical revolution. As a matter of fact this second generation technology is so important that there is even a summit every year which is completely dedicated to discussing Web 2.0. The first summit was in 2004 where it was dubbed by Tim O'Reilly as Web 2.0. Last year the summit was in San Francisco, CA on October 17-19 and this year the summit will be held in New York, New York on September 16-19 http://www.web2summit.com/. If this wasn't enough there will also be summits in Europe Berlin, Germany and Tokyo, Japan in 2008. This shows the great importance of web 2.0 http://www.web2expo.com/.

Web 2.0 has several definitions, Tim O'Reilly refers to Web 2.0 as business embracing the web as a platform and using its strengths.
During O'Reilly's openning statement of the first Web 2.0 conference, O'Reilly and John Battelle summarized what they saw as the themes of Web 2.0. They argued that the web had become a platform, with software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of the "Long Tail", and with data as a driving force. According to O'Reilly and Battelle, a design of participation where users can contribute website content creates network effects. Web 2.0 technologies promote innovation in the assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers.
Level-3 applications, the most "Web 2.0"-oriented, only exist on the Internet, deriving their effectiveness from the inter-human connections and from the network effects that Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness in proportion as people make more use of them. O'Reilly gave as examples eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball and AdSense. Level-2 applications can operate offline but gain advantages from going online. O'Reilly cited Flickr, which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database. Level-1 applications operate offline but gain features online. O'Reilly pointed to Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion). Level-0 applications work as well offline as online. O'Reilly gave the examples of MapQuest, Yahoo! Local and Google Maps (mapping-applications using contributions from users to advantage can rank as "level 2"). Non-web applications like email, instant-messaging clients and the telephone fall outside the above hierarchy.
Basically what Wikipedia means by the Web 2.0 having several definitions it is that there are several levels and uses for the Web 2.0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2


Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web-20-compact-definition.html
Basically, what O'Reilly is saying here is that web 2.0 is a new generation of web use and that as time goes on there will be imporvement just as history has shown us that through time things have improved for mankind as far as modernity. There most likely will be a Web 3.0 in the future.

I chose flicker to work with but there is actually two parts to this. I first wnet to a blog and I commented on a community page that people were discussing illegal immigrants. A topic that is very hot for me and it is my passion. It is amazing how many people are so ignorant to the actual facts of illegal immigration and how there is so much hate. Well I posted a comment but I was not able to post pictures so I created a flicker account and linked the flicker to this other website and I have no clue what it is but her are the links http://world.scvlife.net/us-mexico-border/#comment-45204/ this one takes you to my comment and if you click on my name it will take you to flicker but here is my flicker site as well. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24303620@N04/. My pictures were part of an action research that I did on globalization of the border cities.

I am so amazed with the stuff I have learned up to now, although it gets to me because since it is new stuff that we have to learn sometimes I just want to throw in the towel and skip an assignment but at the end of my assignment I am glad I explored and worked it. Lets face it this is the kind of knowledge we will need to get those jobs after graduation.

My tags were border cities, illegal immigrants, undocumented, lost children in the desert, repatriated children, immigrant children.

Another thing that I liked about this is that my dad is retired and the only hobby he has is writing and quoting the bible but he emails it to me and to my brother I do not want to read it and my brother does not have time to give him feedback. But when he comes in to town again I will be able to teach him how to blog and post his thoughts and share with people that may be interested in what he has to say.

Which leads to another thing I like about this is that I can also put out my thoughts and opinion about issues like immigration and other hot topics.

Week 6 Posting The USENET

The USENET is such a wonderful tool rich in resources and ways to let out what is in your heart and mind and be heard. whether or not the comments you may receive are negative or positive it is ok. It is just too bad that there are people that misuse this wonderful tool for other purposes.

The News group I did not like was the one I posted on alt.politics.immigration. It was so full of racist remarks that I could not resist to create a more positive post about immigrants.

The one I newsgroup I identified most with was alt.support.grief my first daughter Krystal would have been ten right now died when she was 7 days old. I have experienced a tremendous resilence however I have the need to help other families to deal with their loss. I feel that I was able to bounce back because of my faith and the fact that I had a lot of support from my family. I have had total closure but this gives me the opportunity to help not just people in my near community but I can give support to people that are in other countries as long as they are able to speak English or Spanish. Honestly I know that it is not humanly possible to recover from such a huge loss especially when your baby dies in your arms. My heart goes to all the women that need the encouragement and support to overcome thier loss.

I have to restate what I have said in the past postings, internet education is very important. School Board of Education should make it a requirement to take an internet course as a requirement to graduate from high school. There are so many kids that are using the internet for the wrong reasons. There are global communities like the one that Dr. Wosinski is a part of UCP-SARnet. or TakingItGlobal that are a partnership in trying to create awareness of global issues such as poverty, abuse, drugs, and so many other serious matters. For example:The research partners Dr. Wosinski is working with are several community issues among them are community campus partnerships for health. It is a nonprofit organization that promotes health through partnerships between communities and higher educational institutions. It was founded in 1996, Their network has grown over 1,800 communities and campuses across North America and increasingly the world that are collaborating to promote health through service-learning, community-based participatory research, broad-based coalitions and other partnership strategies. These partnerships are powerful tools for improving higher education, civic engagement and the overall health of communities and most of the networking is done online. This is becoming the new trend however, at the same token the USENET can be a way to breed hate to children that are rejected b society such as the boys from the Columbine masacare.

According to IEEE Explore the USENET will get worse due to the amount of users. "Current Internet users see the combination of World-Wide Web (WWW) and electronic mail as a synonym for the Internet. While WWW is excellent for easy and fast dissemination of information and e-mail facilitates efficient communication, a means for widespread, threaded discussion and interchange of information among large groups of users is still necessary. WWW has experienced a tremendous innovation boost during the last years, resulting in an elaborate networking infrastructure. Usenet News, however, has only been slightly improved over its initial definition, which is no longer apt for the increased data volume". http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/6293/16788/00773041.pdf

1. Hauswirth, Gschwind (1999). IEEE Xplore. A cache architecture for modernizing the Usenet infrastructure. Retrieved on 2/23/2008http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/6293/16788/00773041.pdf

Privacy in the Internet

One important aspect about the internet that perhaps many internet users take for granted is the privacy issue. First of all many people are concerned about making purchases over the internet because they are concerned that their card number can be retrieved and misused,secondly,perhaps job seekers are most vulnerable in getting the privacy violated when posting their resumes online and thirdly,since there isn't any formal law within cyberspace internet users are at thier local goverenments mercy in seeking protection against the violation of their privacy. Although, the internet is a great tool and provides an vast amount of convenience, it is important that internet use becomes part of the high school and college curriculums and a requirement for graduation.

So many people are concerned about making purchases over the internet becuase they are concerned thet their card number can be retrieved and misused, well this in fact is true but as Walt Howe mentioned that a credit card is not safe even when it is handed to a cashier at a store, when making a phone payment, or if the reciept is thrown out becuase the person handleing the credit card can easily copy the card number down to later use it for their personal use and the same goes for a credit card recipt that is thrown out. The reciept if not disposed of properly can end up in the wrong hands and be misused for their benefit. Therefore, a credit card being used in cyberspace is should not be the greatest of the worries of the internet society. As a matter of fact becuase people are so reluctant to using their credit card in cyberspace inadvertently the cyber community themselves have hindered the growth of electronic commerce (https://myasucourses.asu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_565287_1.


Moreover, perhaps job seekers are the most vulnerable in getting their privacy violated when posting their resumes on line. As many students are getting ready to graduate from college they are encouraged to post their resumes online. Pam Dixon did a research on resumes and how resumes are being misused and she found that in one day HotResumes.com sold 4,942 resumes and or emails for thirty-three cents each that is one thousand six hundred thirty dollars FTC-HELP and or the website www.ftc.gov/ (http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/Dixon-JobPrivacyRpt.htm).

Lastly,since there isn't any formal law within cyberspace internet users are at thier local goverenments mercy in seeking protection against the violation of their privacy. There are five aspects of invasion of privacy within cyberspace.
1.Unsoliscited email not regulated by the Federal Law, 2. defamation, 3. search and seizure, 4. secrecy, and 5. the creation of databases consistency of personal information. In regards to unsollicited emails a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled that companies do not have a First Amendment right to send unsolicited messages to online service subscribers. There are other ways that many communities seek to handle this situation is that the users complain to the offender's service provider and publicly denounce the action on the Internet Blacklist, filter out unsolicited email,and many people have sued spammers in court and they have won.
Many states prohibit defamation, regardless of the form it takes. "Defamation consists of false and unprivileged publication which results in economic damages. Financial loss is not necessary where the statement implies that a person is a criminal or has an unpleasant disease, or which injures a person in respect to his other office, profession, or business. A judge in Texas issued an injunction to stop defamatory posting by an Internet user. Hate messages sent by e-mail have also resulted in criminal penalties". People have been able to file a suit against a John Doe and subpeona Yahoo and other companies and they are not disputed but usually when it is discovered who is making the defamatory accusations charges are dropped.
In regards to search and seizure there is a fourth amendment that protects the Americans however, there it does not apply when the search and seizure applies to information on a disk or on a hard drive.Secrecy and confidential information when violated can cost companies millions of dollars becuase they take information and sell it to competitors and to others for harmful reasons to the company. The law is in a state of continual development regarding issues of jurisdiction over individuals and businesses within cyberspace. The very first case was U.S. v. Thomas. According to http://www.netatty.com/privacy/ they have hope that the Supreme court will almost certainly lay down some guidelines within the next few years (http://www.netatty.com/privacy/).

Therefore, since the cyber community is in sucha vulnerable state and the laws are still in development, emloyment seekers and cyber cutomers should not sit passively and let the cyber criminals create an unsafe environment they should report spam and or report to their local authorities or any other measure if they feel their privacy has been violated, furthermore, Cyberspace should be treated with much more seriousness than it is currently handled and it should be made a requirement that before being able to surf the net they should take a course on educating them on what is correct and what is not. With this more people would not be ignorantly promoting the unwanted emails that potentially can cause so much harm.

1. http://www.netatty.com/privacy/ Retrieved 2/10/2008
2. Dixon, Pam (2003) Resume Databas Nightmare: Job Seekers Privacy at Risk Retrived 2/10/2008.http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/Dixon-JobPrivacyRpt.htm

SPAM

There are so many inconsiderate people in this world and they only think about themselves and how they can leach off of the internet users. According tohttp://spam.abuse.net/overview/whatisspam.shtml there are to main types of SPAM which cause different effects. Ther first one is cacellable USENET SPAM which consists of 1 single message sent to 20 usenet groups and overwhelming them with unwanted advertisements. The other type of SPAM creates its lists by scanning usenet postings, strealing internet email lists and search for email addresses on the web.

SPAM does not cost anything to the sender however it does cost the recipient of the SPAM becuase not everyone has cable internet, there are still people that are using dial-up and are being charged for the time they are online. As a result the recipient has to spend un-necessary time cleaning out his or her inbox to rid his or herself of the SPAM and the meter is running.

Interestingly enough, Dennise Degan worte in the independant.ie that she heard that spam was down by 5% however, just today she had several advertisements offering her loans, viagra, and many other services. Furthermore, she has internet on her phone and instead of being a handy tool and a convinience for easy access to her email it has become a nuceance. She gets alarms in the middle of the night and she has to turn off the phone. As a business person myself I would be utterly annoyed because I cannot turn my phone off I can loose an important business call. After reading this I realized I should not get email on my phone. ( http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/wham-spam-1279608.html).
Lastly, there is a can-spam act of 2003 S.877 states that it will regulate interstate commerce by imposing limitations and penalties to any unsolicited electronic mail sent via the internet. The congresssional findings were that electronic mail is a convinience and benefit for personal and commercial use and it can create frictionless comerece but that it is being threatened by unwanted mail, which consists of vulgar mail and costly as well. It further mentions that half of the emails floating in cyberspace are unsolicited advertisements. (http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877nov22.shtml).
It is very unfortunate that people abuse the internet in this manner, as a matter of fact my assistant does not use the internet wisely and I had to pay the price she filled my computer with viruses and she also created unwanted emails for me by surfing websites that are phishing.


1. Deegan, Denise (2008). Independant.ie Retrieved 2/2/2008 http://www.independant.ie/opinion/letters/wham-spam-1279608.html

2. 108th Congress 1st Session (2003). spamlaws.com retrieved 2/2/2008 http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877nov22.shtml

3. Mueller, Scott (no date). spamabuse.net Retreived 2/2/2008 http://spam.abuse.net/overview/whatisspam.shtml