The only FourSquare I know about is the one I played in 3rd grade.

The social networking site FourSquare was just recently brought to my attention. I feel as though every day more and more social networking sites are being created which are becoming more innovative and accessible to all interested users. Well, after a friend told me about FourSquare, I decided to research it and see what it was all about.

Put simply, to my understanding at least, FourSquare is a mixture of Facebook and Twitter, which some of its own unique added twists. Not being a member of FourSquare I feel it is a little difficult to really get the feel of what it offers, but after watching a few videos and browsing the website I've learned some things about it, and here are just a few key aspects of FourSqaure:

• First, you can link FourSquare with you Facebook, Twitter and address book.
• You use FourSquare only with you cellphone. (Of course one that has Internet access) If you do not have a cellphone with Internet access, there is a way to do it via text messages.
• There is a GPS setting that must be turned on if order for FourSquare to know where you are. Where ever you are FourSquare lists places that are around you, if they place you are at is not listed, you may add it.
• You submit "check-ins" to your FourSquare account telling your friends in all of your social networks where you are and what you think of the place, using a lot of detail.
• You are able to check out tips from friends and other uses to find reccomendations on places that they have "checked in" to.
• You earn badges and points based on where, when and how often you check in to your FourSquare account.
• If you check in at a location more than anyone else you become the "major" of that place. It is possible to get certain rewards from the businesses you become the major of for being a loyal customer.
• FourSquare costomers are offered certain specials at some businesses just for being a member. (mostly because they want you to "check in" their business and say good things about it)

Whenever I am somewhere that I am unfamiliar with I am always looking for new places - good new places - to go to. This includes restaurants, places to go for fun and even just scenic places. I feel as though FourSquare would be really useful in that sense, and also open your eyes to new places that you may have never visited if you were not a FourSquare member. I'm not really one to join sites such as Twitter or to make Facebook status' on where I am because I don't think people really care to know what I'm doing at every moment of my life; but I think FourSquare took the "where are you" feature to a whole new level and has intrigued me to want to join it.

LinkedIn

Just recently I became aware of a website called LinkedIn. It is a website that people within the work force use that renders several different features. LinkedIn is a free professional network much like Facebook, except for business people.

One thing LinkedIn offers is the ability for its users to reconnect with old colleagues and recent colleagues. You are also able to reconnect with classmates and stay in touch with whom ever you'd like to find that also has a LinkedIn very simply.

Another feature of LinkedIn is that it essentially "powers your career". Through this website you are able to discover inside connections when you are job searching. You are able to find out new and important business opportunities that you may have not been able to find if you were not a member of this website.

Lastly, and what I think is the most innovative part of LinkedIn, is that it grants you the ability to ask questions and receive answers from the experts. You professional network has many experts who are easily accessible and willing to answer any of the questions that you may have. When you are a LinkedIn member, you are able to ask any question you'd like, submit it, and receive an answer at a fast rate.

I found this website to be a cool idea and when I am looking for a job in the near future I am definitely going to create a LinkedIn account for myself in order to get the most out of my professional network.

1.0? 2.0? 3.0?

Web 3.0 is the next step in the advancement of the web and its applications. Thinking about the web now and how advanced it is, and knowing that is only going to be more advanced is a concept that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around. I feel as though the release of web 3.0 is going to bring about a lot of changes on the web and the way in which we view it. Not knowing very much about what web 3.0 is going to entail I took the liberty of doing some research on the subject matter. My findings both intrigued me and made me question how they are going to pull this one off.

The website which greatly helped me form a grasp on what web 3.0 is going to offer was labnol.org. This website broken down web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 and explaining what each had and what they lacked. They explained these webs in simple English, which is something that someone who is not too, too technologically savvy could appreciate. They had tag lines for each web which I found to be simple and to the point of what each of them offer. Web 1.0 is "the mostly read only web", web 2.0 is "the wildly read-write web" and finally, web 3.0 is described as "the portable personal web". Loving the idea of anything portable, I continued reading. Web 3.0 is going to be all about sematic web, it is going to have about personalization by the user and be a more easy accessible and easy to use web. Web 3.0 is going to basically be your personal assistant. I learned that you will be able to type in sentence into your web 3.0 browser and it will analyze your request and direct you accordingly. The more you use it, the more its going to learn about you (which is actually creepy) and the more it's going to start recognizing the things you like and will direct you to places you'll like without even knowing you like them yet.

The future has a lot in store for us and web 3.0 is just the beginning. Before you know it we might be able to have holographic cell phones, or be able to ichat directly from our smart phones. Who knows what the future holds; all I know is that is just keeps getting smarter and smarter.

What Do You Feel?

Today my friend introduced me to one of the most interesting websites I've ever seen in a long time. It's a website called "We Feel Fine" and it was created in 2005 by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. It's tagline is "We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale. That alone drew me in to want to learn more. In exploring the website I found that what it was, is that it basically harvests human feelings from a very large numbers of weblogs. How it works is that every few mintues the system searched the most recent blog posts for the words "I feel" or "I'm feeling" when these words are detected, the system copies the phrase - up to the period - and records it. It makes note of the emotion in which the person is feeling and it is linked back to the We Feel Fine website. You can view these feelings in 6 different ways, which the website has titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds. You really have to go to the website in order to get the full experience because it's a lot cooler than I'm probably making it sound, but basically, the feelings are presented in a sort of "floating particle" type manner. The darker the color of the particle, the sadder or more negative motion, obviously making the lighter the particle color, the more happy the emotion. Squares include pictures, and the bigger the particle - the longer the sentence. I found myself sitting there for quite a long time clicking random particles and seeing what people from all over the world were feeling. If it sounds interesting to you, you can even click the sentence and it will bring you directly to their blog. I found this website to be so inovative and creative. I've never seen or even heard of anything like this and so I was pleasantly surprised not only by its originality, but by the creative and easy to use layout that it renders.

Check it out at: wefeelfine.org

How'd These Engines Get So Smart?

It's hard to believe, but not too long ago there was no such thing as a "seach engine". Internet users had to find the information they were looking for on their own. But around 1993, the first search engine came onto the scence, it was called W3Catalog and since then more and more search engines have became available to use to seach all areas of the internet. Some of the most popular search engines at the moment are Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing.

Google is the most popular, and most used search engine of all of these. It hosts and develops several different internet based services and products. The way in which Google makes its profit is through advertisments. Google has become such a popular search engine and part of our culture that the word, or verb, "google" was actually entered into the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Google retains billions of web pages that its users can get access to by using keywords and operators.

Yahoo! Search is another web search engine that is owned by Yahoo! Inc. According to Wikipedia, Yahoo! Search provides the ability to "veritcally search" which means that it searchs things outside the Web at large such as images, videos, local, shopping, Yahoo! Answers, audio, directory, jobs, news, mobile, travel and other services.

Bing is one of the newer search engines, it came onto the scene in 2009. One interesting thing about Bing is that it is available in countless languages. Bing has a lot of little features about it that the other search engines don't have that makes it appealing to people who pay attention to and appreciate the smaller details in products they use.

These are only 3 of many search engines available on the internet today. All of these search engines are great, it really depends on the user, what they are looking for, and their personal prefrences. I personally use Google for my search just because I have been using it for so long and I am very familiar with it. I find it easy to use and I always seem to get exactly what I'm searching for by using Google.

0 Friends.. you're better off

After watching the South Park episode “You Have 0 Friends” all of the stereotypical things that are said by people about Facebook were justified. For one, people find the idea that these virtual “friends” that one obtains upon creating a Facebook page are not actually there real friends, but many people feel as though these cyber friends are actually true friends. Also, people compete, whether they admit it or not, to see who can have the most Facebook friends, especially amongst the younger Facebook user crowd, having the most friends makes them feel “cool” or “popular”.

The scene where the character Kip becomes to excited that Kyle added him as a friend and just because they became friends on this site allowed Kip to believe that him and Kyle were not best friends. Also they showed the concept of people taking Facebook and what’s on their Facebook’s so seriously and the idea that it can consume someone’s life so much. When Stan’s girlfriend becomes angry with him because it does not say “In a Relationship” in his personal information section, it shows you how some people care so much about what written on their Facebooks and could actually destroy friends or relationships.

Having a Facebook page myself, the whole idea that Facebook can consume someones life to such an extent, is dumb to me. Probably because I don’t pay too much attention to the information part of people’s profiles, and I don’t allow people to be able to view my profile that I have not personally approved as a valid friend. I use Facebook primarily as a way to share pictures and keep in touch with friends and family that I am unable to see all the time because I am away at school. Although, I am aware that people do take Facebook seriously and so I am careful as to what I write on there and only accept friend requests from people that I know and would not mind if they view the things and information I may post onto my webpage.

Facebook is a very public, much used website, and it is vitally important that people keep that in mind while using the site. Social networking sites like it can become dangerous when people become careless about who they are adding as “friends” and what information they allow these “friends” to see. Many times people who create these websites are creating fake profiles and tricking you into adding them as friend because they want to view your page. All of these things must be kept in mind to any Facebook page owner in order to maintain the safe care-free feeling, entertaining aspect of Facebook alive.

Two days ago I, unfortunately, dropped my phone in my cup of water. Upon the quick thinking of my friends they ran it to the bathroom, blow dried it, and put it in a bowl of rice. (Apparently that's what "they" say to do with a wet phone.) Well, my phone was not having it, and has been useless ever since. Due to the fact that I'm a poor college student, and my parents think I spend my money on the wrong things, so they wouldn't get it for me, I have been without a phone for two days. Two days seems like a short time, but I've never had such a stressful, anxiety filled two days in my life. Being without a phone I feel lost, and almost not safe. I know that sounds weird, but thats just how I feel. I like being able to contact people whenever I please and I like being accessable. Especially walking around campus at night, I like to have my phone on me where I know a friend is just a few clicks away. Needless to say, this experience has really opened to my eyes to how much I depend on technology and how important it is in my life. Back in the day when cell phones were not really a popular device to have, people would walk to each others houses in order to contact one another. That's crazy to me, but for now, I guess that's what I have to do. That or just use one of my friends phones, which is proving to be an easy task considering that 5 of my friends are glued to there blackberry screens while I type this..

Lazy or pretty awesome?

It was just my baby cousins birthday, my mom's birthday, my sister just got her first "big girl" job, and my aunt was just recentley informed there were no signs of her cancer any more. All of these occasions compelled me to get something for each of these people in my life to show them that I'm thinking about them. But being a Marist student and taking some pretty extensive courses this semester, I just don't have the time to run around to different stores and get things for each person, especially considering the fact that each of these occasions and people are very different, which would in turn require me to do a lot of running around. So while sharing all of this with my roomates they suggested I use online shopping. Being a 19 year old girl you would think I did this often, well having the dad I do who has lectured me more on money, and the art of "responsible spending" than anything else, I have done very little online shopping in my whole 19 years. So I went online and looked up not only stores that I was able to order from but ideas for gifts for my baby cousin and for my aunt online. Browsing the internet I was able to successfully find the perfect gift for each of these people in my life and was also able to have it shipped to them. I was able to do all of this in under 2 hours, without leaving my room. When I was done I felt a sense of accomplishment and comfort knowing that the internet and this idea of online shopping has helped me stay connected with my family and helped them know that even though I am away at school, I am always thinking of them and there are sufficient ways in which we can remain just as close as we were before I left for college. And not to mention the fact that it was just so cool to be able to pick out what you wanted, how many you wanted, and in what color and size with just a click of a button.

All of this from online shopping.. I guess this is what my dad didn't want me to know.

What would happen if the internet just dropped?

Today I've noticed just how much I use the internet and how important it is to be able to have internet access as a college student. I've been catching up on assignments for the most part of the day and I realized that every single one of my assignments I had to use the internet, or my computer for. Not to mention the time in which I was procrastinating doing these assignments, I was either on my blackberry or browsing Facebook. Everything I did today was technologically based. I emailed three of my professors assignments, I researched the history of broadcasting for my research paper using the internet, I'm typing this blog using my internet right now.. Using so much internet access today made me think of the question, what would I do if the internet just failed? What would happen if one day we could no longer access the internet? In thinking about this question I sincerly believe that people would go crazy. I know I would personally feel anxiety and have a sort of "lost" feeling without being able to log on to the internet. Being such a technologically advanced age.. I'm not sure what would the world would come to if we could no longer access the internet. I'm not sure I want to find out either.

Social Networking

After reading a special report from The Economist on social networking it was brought to my attention just how popular and how technologically advanced our generation has become. According to the article A world of connections, there are 350 million people who are currently using the social networking site known as Facebook. That number is growing everyday. I found it unbelievable that that many people could be connected by a single website and be able to contact each other if they so desired through this site. I always thought of Facebook, MySpace, and even just recently Twitter as the younger generations type of sites. I found them to just be places where friends could keep in touch with friends and post pictures and just keep in touch and communicate with one another online. Although, I'm coming to find that all different types of people are using these sites for all different kinds of reasons. Businesses and business people are using these sites for networking purposes, advertising purposes, and even adults are logging into these sites in order to explore what they have to offer. Every day we are gaining more and more knowledge and becoming more of a technologically advanced world, that I am very curious as to what device, website or service is going to come out next in order to further our advancement.