Google TV

In autumn 2010, Sony plans to begin selling TVs, and Blu-ray player based, under the name brand name Sony Internet TV. At the same time, Logitech will start selling its own
set-top box which will be connected to an existing television. Mouse producer is also planning a special range of tools for Google Tv, such as remote control, keybord, Bluetooth interface.
Unfortunately, the TV offer is only limited to U.S., however the website content will available everywhere.

Pakistan blocks the access to Youtube and Facebook

Access to the most popular video sharing website, Youtube, and most commonly known and used social networking site, Facebook, was blocked in Pakistan, because there is un-Islamic, or Islamic-offensive content.
As for Facebook it started with the activity encouraging drawing images of prophet Muhammad, which strictly forbidden in Islamic countries.
Besides, there are also other pages blocked, like part of Wikipedia and some link to BBC news page, especially the section dedicated to South-East Asia.
One of the links blocked is to a BBC News website article about Pakistani soldiers apparently beating Taliban suspects in a video posted on Facebook- as it was written in one of the BBC articles.
First, they started to block only links, however the offensive content continue appearing. It is very offensive for many people in Pakistan and many of the are ready to delete their profile accounts or have already done it.
The conflict has risen, cause Facebook and YouTube are platforms by means of which free expression of opinions and ideas is possible.

"Such malicious and insulting attacks hurt the sentiments of Muslims around the world and cannot be accepted under the garb of freedom of expression".
Undoubtedly, this a thorny issue. Is a website administrator, who is guilty here,the users or a Muslim people who don't have the distant to themselves?

I would like to attach a coment of one Pakistani girl, which may give us some perspective on this problem:

I find these to be ill-advised measures. Blocking websites in countries does not prevent the content from existing in the first place. I think the Pakistani government should move to ban pornography (which is still easily available) before they ban Facebook and YouTube which are obviously on the better side of human development.

Is it the end of facebook?

Recently, a company named Sophos conducted a survey and asked about 1600 users of Facebook about privacy concerns. It came out that a significant amount of users of this social networking site, feels concerned about privacy settings. Two thirds, so almost 60% users of Facebook is considering leaving the portal, 16% claims that they stopped using Facebook because of inappropriate control and care about their personal data. Facebook has been criticised as a consequence of the recent changes introduced, namely the way of accessing the users' data inside and outside this social networking site.
The concerns are mainly focused on this "opt-out" attitude which gives the access to facebook user's personal data from other websites.
The media suggest that Facebook is to announce further changes concerning privacy in a few days, however there is no quarantee that it will calm the users down.
Despite that critical dispute, it is rather slightly probable that the users will start huge exodus from Facebook. Nevertheless, FB will have to consider introducing some easier ways of setting privacy and change the policy of privacy, cause people really dont want to display their private data like telephone numbers, or pictures with family to the whole Internet.

Spotify and Facebook

Social networking sites go beyond sharing basic information, photos, thoughts with your friends. Music, which creates so called social captial, is also present in SNSs and in some cases it is a base for them. For example, Last.Fm, which enables not only "trying" some bits of music, but give the users the possibility to share their musical tastes with their friends.
What I have encountered recently is another social networking site concerning music, which is called Spotify. What is interesting about it, is the fact that it has been recently revamped and has started a cooperation with both Facebook and iTunes.



The mission statement, which I found on the Spotify's website, present this venture as follows:
Spotify is a new way to listen to music.Any track you like, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Any artist, any album, any genre - all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.

This the way it works with Facebook:


According to Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Newsbeat, the idea of Spotify goes beyond listening friends music collection:
"I think this is a massive step towards the next generation music industry where it's about access to music and not about ownership any more."
Free streaming, listening music for free...what does it mean for music industry? and artists themselves? Does it mean that we will stop buying CDs? This I leave as an open question...

Inspired by:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_10080000/newsid_10087400/10087477.stm

Social Media at Work

Social networking on the Web is almost exclusively an interest of young people.
However, with the growth of popularity, such social networking sites as Facebook
are more and more often of interest of adults to such extend that they are present
in working environment.
Since the main purpose of social networking sites is to socialize, many people
spend significant amount of their working hours on talking with facebook friends and
at the same time they deteriorate their productivity.
However, there are some other concerns regarding social networking sites, which were
mentioned by Anthony Balderrama, and they are as follows:

• 17 percent of companies report that they have investigated the posting of confidential, sensitive or private information to a social network, such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
• 10 percent have taken disciplinary actions against an employee who violated social networking policies in the past 12 months.
• 8 percent terminated an employee for violating a social networking policy.
• 45 percent are highly concerned about unauthorized information being posted on social networks.

It is not only that the employees waste their time, for which they are paid, but also
they may cause a potential danger to a company.

So, if we do not want to make our employers angry, we should limit our usage of Facebook...otherwise, they are gonna put a ban on this website, and for sure, we dont want it ;)

Google Wave

One of the purposes of writing this blog was to reflect on different new media tools. The new tool, I have been using recently is Google Wave.I started to use it as a means of communication for the collaborative research project for New Media and Society. Honestly, I got used to different communication tools like skype, facebook chat, gmail chat, or gadu-gadu (polish communicator). However, since I am almost always satisfied with google tools (I adore gmail, google chrome, and google maps), I decided to give a chance to this one.I have attached this movie to shortly explain you what google wave is about:


Few words about my experience with google wave.
First of all, and it is always important for me, is the design. For me-perfect. Just take a look :)
Secondly, this tool is based on so called "waves". These are the topics u establish and invite people to discuss them. What is more, on these waves u may upload some files. However, you have to know exactly during which moment of conversation the file was uploaded. There is no place, no folder for uploaded files.What I did not like about google. wave was the fact that the information about new wave was sent with delay to my gmail. It works really slow- even writing waves.Unfortunately, this google tool is not so popular among my friends- I used it only for academic purposes and it was rather another nicely organized ibox for me. However, there are many extenstions to google wave, which I have not had a chance to use yet, like for example pollo gadget for conducting surveys. I hope to have more chances to try some of them.

Twitter and Collective Memory

This semester I attended the course of Media and Collective Memory. We approached the topics concerning history and the way media reports on it. Basically, the role of the television, radio, press and the Internet was emphasized. Unfortunately, the issue of social networking sites was not discussed despite its importance.
However, I found an elaboration on it in the article written by Maggie Shiels entitled Congress to archive every tweet ever posted publicly
Generally, the Library of Congress is to archive every single public tweet ever made. The digital archive will include tweets from President Barack Obama on the day he was elected as well as the first tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey. Google plan to finish all of the archive by the end of the summer (from March 2006).

Twitter is claimed to be a valuable source of historical record; it is a source of collective memory. In the era of witnessing, we use social networking sites to comment on the events important for us. For instance, people reacted on twitter in the case of the Iranian election last year, the Mumbai bombing, the Haiti earthquake,
and the downing of the passengers in the Hudson river.

"As a historian you will be able to look back at that and understand what people felt. The same with the healthcare legislation that recently passed. You can look back and say what where people talking about and have those views changed over time? We think that will be really useful."

In my opinion, also facebook plays an important role in the process of presenting collective memory. Last week we could observe post made by Polish people about the plane crash and the death of the President, Lech Kaczyński. There are also facebook groups formed, commemorating events established concerning this tragic event.