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.