I'm Feeling Lucky!

The I'm Feeling Lucky button was created when Google was first aired on the web. This button was incorporated with the search bar, and was placed right next to the search button. Throughout the years, the I'm Feeling Lucky button has stayed relitively the same, but Google is now thinking it's time for a change and creating new ways for the button to be used.

Google saw itself as the Alpha search engine, and had no doubt it was the best for you and your search results. As people would Google different topics, they would be given the option to either search for it, or click the I'm Feeling Lucky button and take a chance on a random website. People and critics alike believed that this option gave Google an edge and gave the website some personality, something that no other search engine had. This pushed Google ahead of the game and created an even wider gap between Google and the rest of the search engines around the web, proving that it was indeed the Alpha engine. Google was so sure in its ability to provide you with the information that you would want, that this button was created. The people at Google were so sure in themselves, that this button was to change the way you search, creating the ability to search not only faster, but more efficient.

For a while, people thought that the science behind the ability for the I'm Feeling Lucky button was so complex because no one knew how the button was so spot on when it came to giving you what you wanted. The science is really quite simple and not complex whatsoever. Google created the button so that when you enter a seaerch term and click this button, the search engine would take you directly to the very first page that would have come up on the search results, had you clicked the other button. This led you to a page that was not only relevant, but the most related page on the Google search query.

Google still has the I'm Feeling Lucky button incorporated into their search engine, however they have made a couple tweaks to this wonderful button. This button is no longer just a button to take you to the first result on the search queue, it leads you to games, doodles, trends, resturants, and much more. When you scroll over this button, while Google instant is turned on, it will begin to spin and land on a certain option for you to click on.

Cyber-Violence

For as long as I can remember, bullying and cyber violence have been occurring. No matter what site you visit someone is criticizing someone about the way they present themselves or the way that they act saying phrases such as "you're so ugly, get off the internet", or "no one would care if you disappeared". Obviously people would care if someone went missing, but the idea is that these online bullies break down an individual online to either make themselves feel better, or to publicly humiliate someone for a random reason.

I feel like some people dedicate their lives to bullying people online due to the constant random comments and really hurtful things people post on each others Instagram photos or peoples Youtube videos. Realize that these people that post hurtful comments rarely ever actually know the people who they insult, they just do it for their pure enjoyment.

I believe that no matter how hard we try, we will never actually stop bullying because someone out there will always get enjoyment from putting people down. This will be a never ending battle that we will never win. We can only offer support to those who are affected by these awful people. There are many services that offer support in schools, phone hotlines, and even friends offer support.

The Comeback Kid: The iTunes Story

I remember the first day I received my first iPod. It was a blue iPod mini. The screen was black and white, only held about 800 songs, and was the size of a small brick. Apple revolutionized the way this world listens to music with the iPod, making Walkmans irrelevant and other MP3 players subpar by comparison. In today's world, either you have an iPhone that also acts as an iPod, or people have an actual iPod. Apple has changed the game on every technological thing you could think of from phones to televisions and yet it's getting beat in one area. Music sales.

Hard to believe right? The creators of the iPod that changed how the world listens to music, are getting beat at their own game. Back in the day, iTunes was cheap. Each song costs .99 cents and some were even free. Nowadays each song costs 1.29 per song and people just aren't buying them. Why you ask? Because 1.29 for a song is just way too much money.

Many websites have created ways to download songs for free, due to this overprice of music such as Limewire, Frostwire, Spotify, and Soundcloud. You can also search a Youtube video and download the audio from the video and save it as a song on your iTunes library. iTunes is slowly losing its rein over the music industry, and with that may lead to the intense regulation of music downloads to keep Apple afloat because we all know Apple can buy anything they want. Even if that means freedom to download free music.

Gaming in Everyday Lives

I am a big advocate for video games. I love playing them, I love talking about them, I love studying them. Who doesn't love being placed in a mythical world and becoming someone new for only a little while? That being said, many people are trying to blame video games for violence that occurs in todays world, and say that video games are rotting the minds of the youth.

While most video games are violence oriented this day in age, they are not to be blamed for violence in todays culture. Someone may be able to shoot as many people as possible in a came of Call of Duty per say, but the psychological affects that the game actually creates are not enough to distort a humans view of the world and initiate the violent acts that people blame from this.

Video games to me at least, are more of an escape of everyday life, with it being so hectic and all, which leads me to believe that video games are actually the opposite of what people are making of them these days. People go to violent video games to relieve stress and anger out, without doing it violently in everyday life. The video game presents a false reality in which the avatar that you are playing has no stress in their life and is able to roam and fight when and where they please. Being such a stress reliever to most people these days, I believe that many people should be more encouraging of this way of dealing with issues rather than making them seem like such a bad thing. According to Texas A&M with their study of Violent Video Games Relieving Stress, they found that "Young adults -both male and female- who play violent video games long-term handle stress better than non-playing adults and become less depressed and less hostile following a stressful task...". To read more of this study, click on the link above.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated

Back in the day where technology was irrelevant and people actually communicated in person and didn't become one with technology and social media, relationships were easy. Couples kept to themselves and didn't let their relationship be publicized for everyone to see. Those were the days, when a 'like' of someones photo on Facebook couldn't ruin a relationship, or when people didn't complain about how rude their boyfriend is with them. Nowadays, people are totally fine with putting their personal information up for everyone to see all over the internet. It's like these couples are using Facebook to make everyone see how happy they are and try and make you envy their relationship.

People feel like a validation of their relationship comes from 'making it official' on Facebook. It's like the saying goes, "If they don't make it official on Facebook, are they really even dating?". Obviously that is not a real saying, but sadly it's true. If someone these days doesn't display that their in a relationship on Facebook, people judge and wonder why someone would be so absurd to not want to display all their personal information on a social media website for everyone to see. 

What people don't realize is that this public display of affection can ruin relationships and MARRIAGES like no other. One slip up on a SNS can send the wrong message to your significant other and create miscommunication. We all know that the key to a healthy relationship is communication, and with social media creating typhoons where there should only be puddles, can break a relationship faster than glass hitting concrete. People love to cause drama where their should be none and that tends to happen a lot on social media, mostly involving some sort of relationship. My news feed gets destroyed by couples posing love letters to each other on their wall, or posting 1000 photos from their trip to the zoo, and in my opinion, they are getting out of hand and people really aren't realizing the true destruction that is happening before their very eyes. The more you post about each other, the worst of this couple is going to be. 

Solution to this relationship epidemic? STOP POSTING. Once you stop stalking your boyfriend or girlfriends Facebook page, and stop updating the virtual world every minute on what you two are doing, the happier and more close you will become with your said significant other. And yes, if you don't want to update your relationship status on Facebook, you are normal. You should be proud that you have overcome the 'publicity bug' and allowed yourself to not be overcome by this urge. 

 

Copyright within Pinterest

Mostly everyone you talk to today, knows what the website Pinterest is. Pinterest is a website that is solely based on users 'pinning' links they like and what images they enjoy viewing. This service is great for women everywhere because we love other people giving us ideas for our children's birthday parties, the way we workout, or even how we should dress. This system is also great for all of those DIY'ers that love to create everything possible by themselves.

This service may seem great, but this idea has come into a lot of copyright and legal issues within this servers content. While users can post ideas that are their own, some don't give credit where credit is due. The way a pin works, is that an image is previewing per say, the website that it is coordinated with, and on the bottom of the pin is a quick little description of what this entire pin is about. However, you may have a pin that links to your website but the image that is being previewed is not your own image. A user can easily steal a photographer or a designer's image and not copyright it which doesn't give the creator the credit that they want. Many photographers and such are too nice to sue on such a small-scale copyright infringement, however if your 'pin' goes viral and starts to circulate all around the world, and the preview image that was showcased on your pin, may soon be linked to your website and the creator of that image may be very unhappy with you and press charges.

There have been many lawsuits involving Pinterest, and yet the majority of the users have no idea that this is a form of copyright infringement, or where these images that they are posting are coming from. Lawsuits against Pinterest have claimed that Pinterest is just like Google Image Search, in that there are thousands of images on display for everyone to see. However, that claim is not true at all. When an image is uploaded to Pinterest, the image is stored within Pinterest's 'walls' and then becomes part of Pinterest forever. Unlike Pinterest, Google Image Search doesn't store the images within its system, which helped their case during a court hearing.

Pinterest seems to keep their copyright rules where they are now, and not change policy. I feel like in the future we will soon see Pinterest in a lot more legal issues pertaining to copyright infringement.

Article on Pinterest Copyright violations

Search Engine Empire, The Google Story

Throughout the years, the Internet has evolved in ways that us humans could have never expected. It may seem that the Internet has taken up a mind of its own, by determining what we want to see and what it thinks we want to know.

The fact of the matter is that there is no "common Google" anymore and that everyones Google searches and webpages are customized and not standard. According to Eli Pariser, who went onto TEDTalks and explained that Google has created a 'filter bubble' where it only allows what it wants you to see and what you may want to find. (TEDTalks Video HERE). Google has become such a worldwide search engine that it has started to be used as a verb. As stated in my blog, Google (verb), I talk about how people are using terms such as "Oh just google it", and actually the term to 'google' is being used when even talking about using other search engines. The way that the world is flocking around Google is starting to hit very dangerous levels, because if in fact Google does continue to try and secretly regulate what we see, we will soon depend on Google with such immensity that we won't know what to do with out this huge search engine. When children have a report to do on the term "mountains" per say, they won't go to the local library anymore and check out books. The first thing children do, is connect to the internet and search the term on Google.

When looking up terms and wanted phrases on Google, each screen will be different, as stated in the TEDTalks seminar, which obviously prevents you from seeing many different sites that may be beneficial to you. If you mostly google images, then your search results will most likely have Google Images results before any website. (Notice how I used the term google as a verb.) Being such a search engine giant like Google is, it's easy to get caught up in the idea that everything is based around Google. 

SNS Hall of Fame: Twitter

In 140 characters or less, it is pretty hard to try and get clear, important, and impacting news across for the whole world to see. The social networking site, Twitter has revolutionized the way breaking news has traveled around the world and has earned its way into the SNS Hall of Fame. Throughout the years that Twitter has been online, many world wide breaking news stories have occurred and have been broadcasted on this wonderful site. From the riots breaking out around the world, to owners of basketball teams making racist statements, Twitter has created san easy and (short) way to communicate and broadcast your opinion rapidly. Twitter reaches out to such a large crowd in such a quick time due to their use of "hashtags". The hashtag basically is a statement or phrase that is used to describe an event, which is then broadcasted, then you have the ability to type in that hashtag and see every tweet around the world that relates to the event happening. It is an easy and fast way to spread the word quickly and efficiently.

Below is a map that shows the activity on Twitter after Donald Sterling (owner of the Clippers) was fired, using the hashtag #Bannedforlife.

Twitter Map

Facebook: The New Job Application

For years now SNS have become more prominent and have become intertwined with everyday living.  Every moment of a persons life is documented on a "wall" or a "timeline" for others to view at the push of a button. Companies have caught on with this trend and are utilizing it to its full potential. Many cases have been documented where companies have turned down applicants for a job due to the content that is posted on their social media pages.

Now is this right for companies to do? That raises a whole level of ethical issues concerning peoples rights to post what they want on their social media pages. However, when you are at the point in your life where you are looking for a professional job, you shouldn't be posting pictures and information that would deem you unprofessional to begin with. Companies are using this "interviewing" process to their advantage because they believe that this really shows the character of the applicant and really gives the employers a good sense of who they are hiring.

According to career builder, more than 43 percent of hiring managers have found info on social media that have cost applicants the job. Mostly due to posing inappropriate or provocative pictures or information of themselves at a whopping 50 percent.With these numbers, there should be absolutely no reason why people who are serious about a job search should be posting unprofessional things on a social media website.

Courtesy of: Forbes Magazine

Some tips on "Cleaning Up":
Now that you know how badly social media can affect your career, here are some tips on clearing your name of any nonsense.

1. Search yourself:
• searching for yourself is a great way to see what is actually posted and connected to your name over a wide variety of websites.
2. Delete:
• if you even have to ask yourself if something is appropriate enough to post online, odds are, its probably not. Delete anything that shows or says anything inappropriate or anything that is illegal. 
3. Post Positive:
• start associating yourself with "likes" that show professionalism. Like pages that have something to do with what you want to do with your life career wise. Start posting your work or big career steps to show that your work is everything to you and that you take it seriously. 

Red Bull: A Great Media Empire?

During the Super Bowl this year, I am sure we all saw the Red Bull advertisement that showed some adventurous people saying some pretty motivational things, with the classic motivational music playing in the background. Made you feel like you had to do something with your life, right? I felt like everything I accomplished in life wasn't as great as that person jumping from space onto the landscape of the Earth, but it did have an affect on me.

The fine work of Red Bull's new promotional ad's and their attempt to merge into the media world has become a phenomenon to me. Their success with creating such moving television ad's to creating fascinating news stories that are available on their high-tech website has created a whole new way of enjoying news that appeals to the adventure seeking, music loving community.

Their attempt to create thrill-seeking activities and filming them and placing them into a commercial for the world to see has created this whole new brand. Red Bull is no longer just an energy drink, its a way of life, a way to see life, a way to live.

On the Edge.

Adventurous. 

Google (verb)

To Google something as simple as how to get to a restaurant right down the street, or how to do a certain math problem has become a part of our daily lives. Being a college student, I have my fair share of "googling" basic information just to make sure I am accurate and it has actually become one of my rituals when doing homework. The role that Google has played in lives across the country is astounding. Everyone googles something, no matter what it is, each and everyday, and Google has become a huge game changer for people around the world.

Google has made America simple and very reliable on its power of infinite information. Anything you're uncertain about, what is your immediate go-to source? I guarantee you it's not an encyclopedia. Having every website at your fingertips and every type of information just a click away  has become so alluring that people actually believe it has become something to be addicted to. Having such simplicity is seducing the weak minded that it has actually made its way into the human mind and made such a connection that it has burned its name into your memory and now is your go-to source for anything that your looking for.

Since Google has bought out Youtube, the other mind-killer, Google in itself has become an unstoppable player in the game of simplistic technology. Youtube consumes the lives of millions each day with videos on cats jumping off cars, or babies laughing hysterically without the user actually realizing how much time they are actually wasting. Youtube is a constant distractor from homework, jobs, chores, and other everyday responsibilities.

People are becoming blind from how badly technology is consuming our lives and how dependent we are becoming to our computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.

Nation full of Networks

Connecting with people all around the world is something that has recently come to light these past few decades. Blogging has changed the game on ways of communicating in ways of journalism and just people becoming more creative and sharing their ideas with the world.

Trine-Maria Kristensen, in her interview, talked about how blogging made her feel important and that she knew people will listen to her and her ideas on crafting. Kristensen chooses her topics based on her interests and what she enjoys doing rather than what her readers want her to post. She is very inspirational when it comes to blogging in my eyes, due to the fact that she does what she wants and she is halfway around the world and still gets international views on her craft blog posts.

Here's the link to her interview with Rebecca's Pocket:
Kristensen Interview