Big money....

The biggest purchase I think I would ever spend online would not be over 2000 but it would definately have to depend on what it was. I would spend that much on a laptop or something that I was getting from a credible source but I would never ever buy something offline for that much money if I didnt really know where it was coming from. You would also have to be sure there is a return or exchage policy because you could possibly get duped. There is no way to tell once you put your information out there exactly what you are getting yourself into.

Community!

Virtual Communities and Real Communities have alot of the same ideas. Virtual communities need people who have common interests, people share a sense of belonging, sense of place, homesteading, government, loyalty and trust. The only difference is that online it is much harder to trust someone and be loyal to them than it is in a real community. The reason being that in a real community you meet that person face to face and for the most part know who they are as a person. In a virtual community the person could be someone completely different than who they say they are, and then you are giving your trust out to someone who is a fraud. This being the same reason that it is difficult to have loyalty in a virtual community. A virtual community though has that same sense of belonging as a real community does, and is just as fulfilling.

*PrEsEnTaTiOn*

I'm doing this blog entry a little late so my presentation is already finished and we are presenting tomorrow I assume! But the book the I chose to do my project on is The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold. It was actually a pretty interesting book, because he has explored the internet to an extent that I have never seen before. In some of the chapters though he covers things that we have already talked about in class and have gone over so that makes it alot easier to understand what he is talking about. He talks alot about the positives and negatives of virtual communities and so that will be a big part of my presentation. Rheingold is called the pioneer of the virtual community and it's easy to see why, the man knows his stuff :)

Search engine!

So far up to number nine on the scavenger hunt and frantically searching for more!

BAHHH

Services Online....

So last week in class we went over E-Commerce and all the services that were available online before. When it first started there wasn't much to choose from online but that didn't stop people from becoming excited with the idea and trying to think of anything they possibly could to sell online. Some of the few things that were sold online to start with were books, such as on Amazon.com. Alot of the companies that delivered things offline faded quickly because of the price of gas, and they were spending alot more money shipping and delivering than they were acutally gettin selling the products. Later on though this industry started to grow even more and ideas such as shopping carts and online catalogs came about. Shopping carts are huge and actually one of m favorite things because you can pick things out and put them in your cart but you can also take them back out of your cart if yu decide you don't want them anymore. Alot of things that you see in stores and things you can find on the web. Different departments, different stores, different sections. It's just as if you were walking through a mall deciding which store to go into and once you go in you find it divided into different sections and such. This is a great way to keep services online available and easy to manuever.

StArBuCkS

So I was thinkin about it today and realized that I had said that I was gonna post a few blogs on my new job @ Starbucks :) It's been about a month and 1/2 now and honestly I am just starting to get the hang of the job! All of you who think that you might be getting of easy by having a job at a Starbucks are lying to yourselves! haha all of the people that I have talked to at work said that it takes forever to get accustomed to the job and really know your way around. There is way more stuff to remember than I ever imagined and you know all those complicated orders that people do??? Yea...not fun! So all you people that order Quad Venti nonfat 1/2 decaf no-foam 1 pump white chocolate one pump vanilla no whip no water Espressos.........get a life!!!!!!!!! All in all though....its starting to appeal to me...and I'm definately learning to at least like it.

SHOPPING!!! ♥

Well I gotta say that this is one of my favorite things that we have discussed in class. Honestly, what girl doesn't love to shop! I am an avid believer of shopping online and truly believe that you can find anything that you could possibly want. I have to say though that I am not the most careful buyer and have purchased a few things off sites that could possibly be risky, such as Overstock.com, E-Bay, and craigslist. Sometimes you don't know if the people you are buying from are really going to follow through with what you got. I know a few times my mom has bought off E-bay and never recieved what she brought. The process to actually retrieve the item or get your money back is pretty annoying. One of the main reasons I love shopping online is because of the spontaneity of the buy. My most recent and my most spontaneous purchase was recently when I wanted to go to the Justin Timberlake concert and purchased the tickets the night before the concert on craigslist. I took a chance that the guy was going to meet me and give me the tickets....and luckily he held up his end of the bargain! The concert was definately worth those few hundred. :) My most favorite thing to be online though is purses....I have to say I have probably bought over 10 purses online...most of them Coach haha! Love it! Those who are nervous about online buying are definately missing out...it has become my new favorite thing over the past few years. The one downside.....you still have to be able to go to the mall and try on clothes on with your friends...thats something you cant do when you buy online :)

Kevin Freitas

Well I have definately not wrote on my blog in a while. It has been craaaazy at work for me this week and finding spare time is a little unusual. So a little behind on my Kevin Freitas blog....but I didn't forget! So this past week Kevin Freitas came in and visited us in class to guest speak. First off I noticed that his blog was completely unique and different than many of the other blogs that we have looked at and observed. I think alot of this has to do with the fact that he built his own blogging engine and worked off of that. His page, kevinfreitas.net has a massive amount of info that you can browse and check out. I loved his picture feed, it is amazing that he has over 10,000 photos that circulate through. It was also pretty fun that we had a few cams on his page that were located in a couple random places, like outside his house. Alot of bloggers definately try to keep their identity a secret but you can tell that that is definately not the case for Kevin, I admire and applaud his attitude on that! Till next blog...

Vaaaanity!

I guess in some ways I'm pretty lucky that my parents decided to switch up the spelling of my name! When I did my vanity search on google I was the only person that came up which is pretty exciting...haha. Once I got past that though it was pretty weird to realize that all this information was out there on the internet for everyone to see. Like some other bloggers my lovely myspace page showed up, and some other interesting things that I never expected to come up. I did competitive swimming since I was about ten years old so lots of stats on club swim meets and times came up. Also a few stats on swim meets and water polo matches from high school came up. I think that if your in sports your guarenteed to get at least a few hits! The one thing that did surprise me, besides my myspace page coming up, was the fact that I got a link to the Eastern WA University page showing all the kids who made the Deans list from my freshmen year of college. That was in the Spring of 2006 so I didn't expect that to still be around! I guess it just shows that all of that stuff just kind of follows you around for awhile. All of my google links were things that happened at least two years ago. Anyone could look up this information on you, kinda cool and creepy at the same time!

IDentity

Yo....so I had a request to post the website about the ID theft....its pretty interesting, in my opinion its good to be aware about these kinda things so take a look! www.TheNewsTribune.com/news/projects/idtheft

The News Tribune

I had no idea that online newspapers were so popular until Mark Briggs spoke on Thursday! It was really interesting to hear someone speak who virtually did his whole job through the web. Listening to him speak and seeing how popular online papers were these days kinda made me realize that printed newspapers probably will die out very soon. They are definately quickly going downhill popularity wise. There are so many more things that you can see on the online paper versus the regular newspaper. You can interact so much more. If there is one subject that you want to read about all you have to do is type it in and it comes right up, instead of searching through the whole paper just to read one section that interests you. You also get to view videos online which is really neat because its almost like watching the news on TV. The amount of blogs that they have on their website is also incredible because basically anything that you could ever want to read about comes in a blog. One downfall is that people can comment where everyone can see which can kind of be annoying if they are being negative. But thats not to say its not interesting getting to view what people think about an article. One things that really interested me was the online sort of blog about the id theft that came in chapters. That was really cool that they were able to do that and you probably never would be able to dedicate that much of the newspaper to an article like that. When he was talking about it I wrote down the website so I could read it myself and I would definately be interested in viewing more pieces like that because of the fact things like that could happen to anyone. All in all, having Mark Briggs come in and speak was really informative and eye-opening and I'm definately looking forward to future guest speakers!

Another...

Second post about similarities and differences! After I was done I realized I forgot a few :) *Similarities- chain letters, junk mail, forwarding, & ads *Differences- viruses in e-mails, and spam Just to name a few...hopefully I won't think of others after I post this!

Uh oh!

So I am finally posting another blog today because with my luck I couldn't get into my account! I definately have been trying to get into my account for about a week now since I first made it, I thought at first that I had my password wrong so I have been desperately trying to think of every password that I could have possible put into the system. Today I finally realized that when I had typed my e-mail into blogger when I first signed up I had mistyped it, so basically that was the problem. :) So now I am finally posting the similarities and differences between e-mail & mail!!! Yay!! *Some of the similarities that I have come up with have been alot of the things that we talked about in class such as the fact that we use e-mail the same way that we use snail mail, to keep up with friends and relatives, send invites, connect with co-workers and colleagues. Millions of people send e-mail every day just the same as snail mail. There is also a post office just like mail where your e-mails are routed from. You can send pictures, newsletters, and invites. When you send an e-mail it has to pass through many networks to get to you, just the same as mail has to pass through many hands to get to the mailbox you want it to reach. E-mail can also be hacked into just the same as someone could steal your personal mail. There are many ways e-mail and mail are alike but also many differences too, such as the fact that it may take days and days for you to recieve your mail but it only takes a matter of seconds for an e-mail to reach its destination. One thing going for snail mail is,when you write an address incorrectly it can sometimes reach its destination just the same. But with e-mail the address has to be exact or it will never reach where it is meant to go. With mail it also costs for stamps and such while e-mail is virtually free. The main difference between e-mail and mail though is that in this day and age e-mail is so much more convenient to use what with everything being done on a computer. Thats all for now....blog being posted about Mark Briggs coming soon!!

Well today is my first day on board the blogging world! Got to admit...a little intimidating at first but I'll get used to it! It's a little like starting MySpace or Facebook for the first time and I'm addicted to both so I'm sure I'll catch on pretty speedy! I started this blog for my Living and Working in a Virtual World class but I think I'll probably end up keeping it for awhile. I'm studying abroad in Argentina in the Spring and I think this would be a pretty tight way to keep everyone posted on my day to day activities...plus i can also post pics so that's pretty fun! Anywho I'm diggin my Internet class so far because its pretty open to a neverending amount of topics! Well I'm off to din din with the fam but I'll post again tomorrow with my assignment and more on how I'm adjusting to this new bloggin experience! Peace for now!