Lauraw89's Blog

lauraw89 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:43:30 +0000

In order to maintain my privacy online, i am very careful about what i share. Depending on what i am giving my information to, i alter the information i share, sometimes ill use my middle name, or my wrong email, or a fake address. Not that i feel someone will come to my address, but its just a simple precaution to prevent receiving frivelous information that becomes simply annoying. Its rare these days to come across a site that doesnt constantly bombard you with advertisements and pop ups – than you word press!! I know there must be information about me out there that is hidden from my eyes, something as simple as my doctors chart, i would love to get a peek at! its basically a compilation of thoughts on me based on what i have said, or talked about. Similar to some sites which must use my information to better figure out their market. By using hashtags or tracking cookies, im sure there must be some web site which has me profiled, and based on my web activity i would love to see what type of person i appear to be in cyber space!

-Is there some information that you do not have access to about yourself that you want? What is it & why would you want it?

Making privacy public?

lauraw89 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:33:34 +0000

When surfing online, one always has to be cautious. Invasions of privacy can happen without the victim even knowing it. credit card scams, identity stealing, etc. When i’m surfing the web, im cautious about giving my actual information. For example when I am asked to fill in my name, address, etc, unless it is for something that needs proper information such as shipping or billing. But if my information is being asked in order to apply for a membership for oh i dont know, a blog site, i often will substitute my real information for a little false information in order to protect my identity as well as avoid annoying spam or future advertisements that will surely soon fill my inbox. On sites such as facebook, i use my real name, however information like my email, phone number, etc, are not on my profile, if a friend needs that information, they can ask for it. With any information facebook has, they legally then own it. I am very picky about what i share and what i choose to keep private. Its not worth risking privacy invasion in order to have a more full profile. Luckily i do not have a specific story about privacy infringement with facebook, however i do know of close calls with my friends. One friend heather is at school for photography, she often would post her artwork on her profile so that she could gain more expoure, until she learned the hidden fact that facebook owns anything you post. To say the least, those photos were removed right away. Privacy online isimportant and hard to come by. We dont know of the little tricks about what information is going to be sold for marketing information or for privacy invasion. You gotta be smart out there in cyber space.

Search Logs

lauraw89 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:31:24 +0000

Over the past few days I’ve tried to track what i search and what types of sites i visit. Some of the things i search are typical of a female student – anything and everything that will help distract me from doing my work – essays and studying can be put off for a few minutes to read fmylife.com (try it! you’ll be addicted!) alot of the things in my search logs are frivelous sites such as fmylife.com, drinktheglitter.com, perezhilton.com, alot of entertainment, news, media sites. People may get thrown off when trying to profile me by a list of search logs though. I take several different sorts of courses, so my searches vary depending on what work i have to do (when im not procrastinating on other sites) searches such as anti-feminism, gay/bisexual media representation, Budha, or song lyrics come up in my searches. Although my searches do revolve heavily around school, there are also some personal searches done, such as banking, cooking sites, or the torontostar.com. It would be a fairly acurate and un-embarrasing method of profiling for me to research my search logs; ive got nothing to hide!

Its interesting to see the different things different sites bring up on searches. Being a past figure skater, i typed in figure skating on google and yahoo, heres what i found.

Google produced two advertisements on the side, for buying skates, and for Scott Hamilton paraphenalia, on the main search, there were about 4 news results from different american newspapers, and a wikipedia entry on figure skating.

yahoo presented me with 8 advertisements and even a space for “see your message here”, it did show me 3 news results as well from different sites then two more reliable sites (usfigureskating.org and tsn.com/figure-skating) before giving me the ever-evolving wikipedia entry – interesting!

Contrary to what i would have thought, yahoo showed me more advertisements but also provided more useful sites before giving me wikipedias unreliable information.

Lesson learned: you’ve got to be careful about what sites you trust, dont be lazy and just always depend on one search engine – two minds are better than one!

Blogging about Blogs

lauraw89 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:50:21 +0000

Blogs is a funny word, yet the meaning of it is much more than just a silly sounding word. People use them to share information about their lives, get information about the outside world and shed light and ideas on different issues. Thanks to the wonderful world of technology, people have many options for blogs. Moblogs (mobile), videoblogs, and audioblogs. Moblogs are sort of like twitter, I read Sampath’s Mindspace, a moblog in which a girl from a french community updates her readers on her daily life. My brother is currently traveling New Zealand with his girlfriend and they post new updates via their video blog whenever they decide to leave the beach and beauty of New Zealand to talk to the unfortunate ones left behind in Canada. Audiblogs to me are almost like a radio show, they give a person a voice which can then be broadcast to as many people who are willing to listen, that power can do wonders for people. As for corporations, many have created their own blogs to allow the public and shareholders alike to know about the happenings on the other side of the company. Google and Facebook both have blogs which are extremely useful. They both can update readers about the advancing benefits of their services and broadcast news. For example, facebook is in the middle of a lawsuit, they can use their blog to convey their side of the story as well as ensure users of the continuing services and improvements that will be made. These two corporations use their blogs for different reasons since their services are both so different, but they use them similarily for advertising purposese; they both promote their services in a positice light.

I recently read a few of my classmates blogs, everyone has their own personal touches. Megan’s blog http://ms07cj2p26.wordpress.com/ was amazing! she manages to be informal, yet interesting at the same time. She knows what shes talking about and makes sure that readers who may not have such a wonderful COMM 2P26 prof understand it as well. Her post about her Nexus (an awesome facebook tool, look it up!) was so interesting, her network was all fairly intertwined with few random friends on the outer parts of her groups.

Wikis

lauraw89 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:38:31 +0000

Wikipedia sweeped the world and became an essential for many people. Although it may not be the most reliable information thats just the thing, people can all add their own opinions and information to collaborate to form one giant site about anything. As for bookmarking these key sites, i currently use the pre loaded favorites option. I recently found delicious, a site that allows you to bookmark and share handy web pages you find. If you use different engines to search for the same keyword, its interesting to see what other types of results come up. Some websites had only vaguely related sites to the searched tag where others are more of a social sharing site. personally i find the websites a little unnecessary, but after a while of exploration, im sure it will grow on me. It seems that it will prove to be invaluable for assignments.

Nexus

lauraw89 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:07:04 +0000

Facebook social network

This application on facebook allows you to see how your networks connect to eachother, pretty interesting to see the different clumps of people and to see how your different friends are interconnected with eachother. It interesting to see how random friends know eachother and how; different groups, interests, and activities connect people together.

Social Networking

lauraw89 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:49:23 +0000

Social networking has become an overwhelmingly large part of current society; it affects daily lives affecting relationships, interactions, and experiences. The more activities you take part in, the larger social network you will have. Growing up, i took part in figure skating, synchronized skating, summer camps, a bunch of different jobs, etc. Thanks to all that, i have a fairly large social network. Regardless of how i met the people in my network, they are all considered friends, even if technically they should be co-workers, bonds were formed and friendships were born! After going to university, friendships dispersed which made face-to-face interactions harder. Now, i rely heavily on texts, phone calls, and webcam in order to stay in contact with my friends that are not here. At university, it can sometimes be hectic and busy, but face-to-face interactions are always handy in order to relax and catch up. Facebook is always a good fall back, but now people have finally started reaching their saturation point so they’ve started turning away from facebook, something i envy! alot of people in my network dont use facebook which is a rarity in todays society. People that are very close to me are people that i keep in touch with, people that i see almost weekly, people i would go to with problems. People that i consider somewhat close are people that would be the secondary person to go to with problems. They’re people who im friends with for a reason, but we dont see eachother enough to have a close relationship.

ICT’s, can’t live without them

lauraw89 — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:21:17 +0000

As a society we are becoming more and more desensitized to the influence that technology has on our lives. E-mails, internet, cell phones, TVs, BLOGS! are all things that effect the ways we act in our daily lives. Personally, my cellphone is attatched to me at all times, I feel naked without it! I use my phone, my computer, TV almost every day, almost religiously! I use them for entertainment, relaxing by the TV to watch a movie,planning the evening with texting and calling, keeping up on the latest gossip on facebook or Perezhilton.com. Even in school I find it hard not to use my computer in class to help take notes, the convienience and ease of typing out notes and looking up definitions etc is something that I know i take advantage of. A few summers ago, there was a massive power outage across Ontario, living in downtown Toronto, I noticed an extreme change. Billboards weren’t flashing (thank god), subways weren’t working, the city was paralyzed! People have become so dependant on technology that people are lost without it. My daily life revolves around my ICT use, although shameful, I find it hard to live without it. The fact that most daily activities involve technology in some form says alot about todays information society, society has become too dependent on external factors that they have forgotten that life is possible without technology, its as if we think past generations must have been insane, or missing out simply because of their lack of gadgets.

Hello world!

lauraw89 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:01:03 +0000

Hellooooooo, my name is laura, im in 2nd year at Brock University studying communication studies – media and society. I eventually want to get into the field of promotions or advertising, options are still broad! For fun I like to hang out with friends, go out, or play sports. This year is the first year I haven’t been involved in organized sports but since as far back as i can remember I’ve been a figure skater!

Looking forward to an interesting semester in 2p26!