Identity Theft

Our groups project is on Identity Theft, we will be splitting up the topic into four areas for our four group members. I will be looking into the technology that theives are using to steal our identity. The rest will be a surprise for the class on wendesday!!!

Erik Hanberg

Today in class Erik Hanberg stopped by to talk to us

Erik Hanberg has worked for many different places, some examples are...

Cityclub
Bellarmine
GrandCinema

He talked about TWO kinds of work:

Hourly & Salary
-Which are most jobs
-Wages are capped by hours available
-Pay is steady
-Other people with the same job earn similar amounts.

Scalable Work
-Pay can "spike"
-There are almost no limits
-Pay varies wildly between individuals

Other major points made by Erik Hanberg

-"Winner Takes All"- The 1st and 2nd takes all
- Example: Amazon or Ebay (No others can compete)

-The Black Swan Effect
-Book about unpredictability
"The Internet is the black swan"

It's nothing but work...and parties...and blog posts

-10,000 hours of work - Bill Gates "After 10,000 hours of work that is when you will be successful"

Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt!!!

Well here is my answer to #9.... This scavenger hunt is easier then I thought it would be. It is a little time consuming to find the info on the actual webpages but if you know how to surf google this scavenger hunt will be a brezzz... Other then that here is my blog Andrew.

Done and now off to question 10.

What the heck is convergent????!!!!

Convergent:

Tending to come together from different directions.
Exhibiting convergence in form, function, or development.
Having the tendency to become similar while adapting to the same environment.

Yet, I did not truly find one defined answer to what the word "Convergent" meant, from the definitions above I can conclude that the word Convergent is the process in which two companies come together "in the same environment" to work on a product. Such example as the iPhone. Other Convergent companies maybe Dell and Windows or google and the g1 phone. They are companies that 1. Work in the same environment 2. They exhibit convergence in bringing functions together in making a product by functioning together to develop a convergent product.

Physical vs. Online Publications...

Which would you choose if you had a choice. A source that may come to your door on a daily basis, a weekly basis or a monthly basis. Or a source that could be instantly uploaded to your phone, computer or even television. Today more and more physical publications are becoming online publications. Newspapers are in the middle of the transition as we speak, with a rapid decrease in readers of the newspaper and diving profits newspaper companies are on the run to reduce expenses and raise profits, how are they doing this you may ask???? Online publications are much cheaper then printing out page after page of print, they can now produce a paper with half the price and at the same time tapping into the new Internet generation. Along with this reduction of expenses newspapers now are increasing online advertisements from companies like Target, Home Depot and so on. With increase of traffic through these web pages newspaper companies can now ask for more money in placing these ads. Newspapers are just one of thousands of publications making there way onto the Internet. Which publications you may ask?.....

Business cards
Calendars
Newsletters
Post Cards
Books (Huge Market)
Bills
Applications
Catalogs
Maps

The list goes on and on....

The main reason for this change is a more effiecent way in communicating with future customers, and a huge reduction in price of printing out physical publications....

Vanity Search

Online banking, Facebook, MySpace, twitter, blogger, eBay, and so on are some of the great examples of the way in which technology is connecting one another, but at the same time we have to think about what all this technology is doing to our privacy, to are security and overall image that the internet can portray about us. We were given an assignment in class to do a "vanity search", my first thought was cool, and maybe one or two things may pop up. As soon as Google was done with the search I came to find out that one, anyone could connect directly with my Facebook and MySpace, see my picture and info which was pretty creepy. Then to come find out that my old job with Pierce County Parks and Recreation showed up, it gave information on when I was hired and the amount of money I had earned that year. That is something I would like to keep to myself and employers not the public. It is amazing to think that out of millions and millions of files circulating through this enormous web that Google is actually able to pin down a match so quickly. Overall the vanity search did come up with some things, in the end not as much stuff as I thought it might. I would defiantly recommend that people do a vanity search on themselves it can be pretty humorous and addicting when you start searching for other people to try and "dig up some dirt" on them.

Guest Speaker

Mark Briggs recently stopped by to speak to our class; he is the author of Journalism 2.0 and the CEO of locally based Serra Media.

Serra Media is a technology and services company that's taken a unique approach to the digital challenges for local publishers. We power websites and provide mobile solutions to build community for hyperlocal news, information and shopping and help companies capture local advertising dollars shifting from traditional print publications.

He explained his business model now known as Serra Media and the many different concepts being rolled out to the public. He began talking about this huge market for online advertising that by 2013 local online advertising will be in the area of nearly 30 billion dollars yearly. So why wouldn't someone want to tap into a market like that. Mark Briggs explained his concepts coming out of Serra Media that would offer businesses and customer’s assistance in whatever they would like. For customers Serra Media has introduced Newgarden and Townluke. Both of these systems use a geotargeted algorithms, Townluke targets business in the customer’s immediate area instead of a city 30minutes away or a city not even in that state for a customer to visit the website, call the businesses and get updated reviews from others. From the businesses perspective these systems can either benefit or hurt a business’s reputation or even financially. This will make businesses think more receptive to the customers need. The last thing a business will want is a bad review that may discourage 1 or even 100 customers away. Some businesses may even pay Serra Media to have their business to be the first highlighted spot, just as many do with Google map. The second concept was Newsgarden, this system will put news on the map of where it happened. Giving families and communities a better awareness of what is happening in their backyard.

Once we were done talking about that we began to discuss the future of newspapers and this idea of pay to play for news. Mark first stated this idea that subscriptions to papers pay for the news but that the subscription is more of a charge for the service, the printing, the delivery, etc. Not for the news itself. He then broke down that nearly 20% of revenue to newspapers comes from subscriptions and 80% come from advertisers. He said that this idea of charging for content will not last for papers since the public can get free news on Google or abc news, Komo 4 news and the list goes on and on. So why would the newspapers want to block nearly half of their readers by adding this fee. We then went into this idea of charging to gather

archived materials

again Mark explained that with this wall around the information there are no ways that Google can connect to the information slowing down traffic to the webpage. He then said that only 30% of all online traffic begins on the actual page, but that the rest comes from other sources (Google, Yahoo).
I agree very much with everything Mark Briggs said about the newspaper industry. At this point of time newspapers are having a very hard time staying afloat, the one huge thing they have on their side is the public. Newspapers have had decades of gathering this respect from their readers, so this idea of now charging the readers is one of the worst ideas I have heard of. Yes, at first they may see a very small increase in revenue but in the end all the readers they used to have will either go to a competitor newspaper that is free or to Google news or the local television news. Overall I believe that Mark Briggs visit to the class was very beneficial and he gave some great points on various topics. I am looking forward to the next guest speaker in our class.