Thursday’s class discussion was very interesting. Michelle and James did a great job with their presentation and getting everyone involved in the readings. I left class quite disturbed though. There are so many new advancements in technology that I wasn’t aware of. Prof. Halavais and Michelle discussed the site where you can look up your street address and actually zoom in to your house or apartment. In a way I thought that was a cool new idea. On the other end, I thought about stalkers and predators. Prof. Halavais pointed out that down the road, you will be able to see things in real time with that site. That function would allow a complete stranger to see whether someone is  home or not just by clicking on his mouse.

Today, I was at work and I went on the internet to look up the rainforest cafe. I was going to take my daughter there after I finished getting some things done. She asked me if we had google. And I asked her how she knew about google. She said that you can look things up there and that at school, they had visited the site. I thought that was funny. We had just talked about the power of the google name and now my 8 year old daughter was asking me to go on google.com.

Back in May, I decided to get a myspace page. Quite frankly, I thought I was too old but a lot of my friends and co-workers had a page and I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch with everyone. As I have previously stated, I was thankful that I had signed up because I found some of my old friends that I had lost touch with. I thought I had all of my privacy settings set up and that it would be hard to find me. That wasn’t the case. Several people including an ex-boyfriend found me. I don’t know how he searched and found my information. Or maybe it was through an indirect friend. Either way, I wasn’t happy about it. I thought about canceling my account. Initially, I left my page public for about a week but the strange e-mails that I was getting, made me uncomfortable.

This whole process reminded me that you have to be careful what you put on the web. Everyone is literally one click away from someone accessing your information. Naturally, I was hesitant to even get a facebook account but it was a necessity in this class. So I signed up. I feel that facebook has better privacy settings and search options then my space. I feel that myspace allows anyone to search you where as for facebook, you have to be a registered member to look for anyone on their site. Remember Miss New Jersey who was being black mailed because she had a facebook account and some of her “suggestive” pictures she had placed on the social networking site were being used against her? Gone are the days of privacy. If you think  what you post or an old picture can’t come back to haunt you, this is a perfect example of how it can.

When one of my best friends meets a guy for the first time, she goes home and googles him to see if any information comes up. I laughed at her for doing it but was thankful that she had done some research on the last guy that she was starting to date. Her google search brought up information about his personal and professional life that she might not have been privy to if she had not done a “background” check on him. Needless to say, this one didn’t last very long.

Is my friend the only person that does a search on a potential boyfriend? Do you research people before you date them?  For those that have myspace and facebook accounts, do you feel that all of your information is easily accessible for anyone on the web to get to?

My plans for my response paper took an unexpected turn this week. I was on the train this morning headed to our New York offices, when my cousin called me to let me know that my uncle had died a few hours before. I was completely overwhelmed with emotion and began crying in my seat on the metro north train. After dealing with my uncle’s illness and thinking that I had come to some sort of acceptance of it, apparently I still wasn’t at the point where I was ready to say good bye. I wanted to turn around and head the other way and go back home to be with my family but I had to go to work. I say all of this to say, the cell phone immediately became the gift and the curse for me. Having to hear such sad news in an environment that I was uncomfortable in and without friends or loved ones to console me, made the situation a lot worse for me. Although, I admit I  was thankful that my cousin was able to reach me and inform me of what happened. I immediately called one of my best friends to tell her the news and then text two of my friends to let them know. Many of you may wonder why I would resort to texting at a time of grief. But for me, that was the only way that I could get the words out. I didn’t want to talk about the fact that he was no longer with me and that I would not see him again. For me it was a lot easier to communicate to them via a text message. Sending a text message was a normal reaction for me. In one of my previous classes, we discussed what would be acceptable to say in a text message versus face to face interaction. And for me, I really think it depends on the individual and circumstance.  Several years ago, I would not have the option of how I would like to relay a message. I would also not have the opportunity to get the information from my cousin right away. More than likely, before cell phones, I would have a message waiting for me at work or at home. Mobile phones and sms allow users to give and receive information instantaneously. Mobile phones let the user travel and be away from home but still stay connected to family and friends without missing out on what’s going on. Today, just happened to be the day that I wish I didn’t have a cell phone and I didn’t have to relay my bad news to everyone.

Like most Celtics fans, I was eagerly anticipating the home opener last night. Yesterday morning, I turned on Sportscenter (no, this isn’t a shameless plug and heard some of the comments being made by Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards. He was saying how his team was going to beat the Celtics in Boston on opening night and continued to say some other rude comments about the newly formed Celtics squad. I automatically assumed that Gilbert Arenas made these comments to a reporter. I learned last night as I was watching the game that he posted these comments on his blog.  This is another example of how popular blogs have become and how the information that is shared on them is becoming newsworthy. By the way, the Celtics dominated the Washington Wizards last night. The score was 103-83.. Go Celtics.

 http://www.nba.com/blog/gilbert_arenas.html.

I learned a little something from everyone’s post about the political campaign’s this week. I have beliefs similar to Ryan’s about following the campaign’s.  http://www.rdmillner.wordpress.com. I would like to make my own decision on who to vote for based on what I believe. Not what someone else is telling me.  I do agree with Jenn (http://www.stayconnected.wordpress.com.) about some of the presidential hopefuls using a social networking site like myspace. Every time I log on to myspace, I can see the cool new people that have just signed up and gotten an account. One of those cool new people could very well be Hilary or Obama. Although I think it’s smart to use these sites to appeal to a mass audience, I don’t know how effective they are. There’s so much advertisement on myspace right now, that I tend to ignore what’s being promoted at the time, even if it’s an interview with one of the candidates.