News Reports

· I saw this article on USA Today when I was looking though the technology section of their website. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2007-04-13-google-doubleclick_N.htm?csp=34 is the exact website, but you can find it by also searching the website for Google. The article discussed the notorious and quickly growing Google’s purchase of DoubleClick. DoubleClick helps large companies manage their advertising in a proficient way. Through this article I saw the other recent purchase of Google, which was YouTube. My opinion of Google expanding this fast is pure amazement. With income expanding, Google has turned to purchasing smaller companies in hopes of getting in on their growth and increasing popularity. Even though YouTube is better known by the youth around the world, DoubleClick is a better industry known business. With millions and millions of dollars being dumped into advertising by large companies, they are willing to drop a slightly smaller chunk of change on making sure their money is well used. I support Google’s expansion and think that it is brilliant for a company to use their income in a way that supports their expansion in the online industry.



· This article came up at the beginning of March pertaining to Sports Illustrated’s decision to withhold their swimsuit edition from all public, academic, and school libraries. I heard about this on SportsCenter first, and then followed up online at aol.com. You can find this small article at:
http://nfl.aolsportsblog.com/2007/03/08/sports-illustrated-withholds-swimsuit-issue-from-libraries/.
This article is short but discusses Sports Illustrated’s decision and the reason they made it. They said that “Over the course of time, we've received feedback from some of those institutions saying it wouldn't be an acceptable thing for them to have or to share with their constituents, and the decision was made that this was one way to hopefully alleviate that issue.". The president of the ALA responded by saying, “The policy decision by the publishers of Sports Illustrated to selectively deny this year’s 'swimsuit issue' to some of its paid subscribers is outrageous-patronizing and paternalistic in the extreme.” This is a very powerful response, but I believe that it is very true. Paying customers were not allowed the decision to accept or refuse the swimsuit edition, so therefore they are not receiving the same benefits as other subscribers to the magazine. I think it is outrageous that Sports Illustrated made this business decision within their own company, without discussing it with each paying subscriber. I know if I was a subscriber and they didn’t send me the issue for fear that I might complain, I would be very upset that they didn’t talk to me first. Now maybe that’s just my opinion, but I believe there should be some kind of response by the libraries.




· USA Today’s homepage provided me with this story on how libraries are starting to broaden their range of books for various cultures. This particular story concentrates specifically on the states of Minnesota and Ohio. Minnesota has seen an increase in their population of Hispanic, Somalis, and Hmong. This increase in immigration has left Minnesota with little or no ways of teaching these immigrants English. The article states that most have began to turn to the public libraries in hopes of improving their English and increasing their knowledge of their native lands. A library in Minnesota named the “Dodge Center”, just received “$15,000 federal grant for a bear-themed story times toolkit for Hispanic children.” I have mixed feelings about this, but overall I feel as if this is a good thing. These immigrants are coming to help the agricultural and meat-packing industries because there aren’t a large number of Americans willing to do these jobs. In return, I think it is a great idea to get the resources they need into local public libraries so they can better themselves not only in the English language, but in their overall knowledge. It is great to actually see immigrants who want to learn more and who are applying theirselves the best they can.


· I found this article through Blogger and saw that it dealt with some information technology. The easiest way to access this site would be to visit the Tech site within Yahoo. It’s the third article down. If it’s already moved the actual website is http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/hughes/11488. I found this very interesting because it told of easy ways for graduates to make their first website. The best thing about these ways is that they were very inexpensive. It mentions programs such as WebDwarf compared to the more expensive Dreamweaver program. They both do basically the same thing, but WebDwarf does so without taking a chunk out of your wallet. They go on to mention Blogger as a great and easy way to start a new website. I thought it was really cool considering we’ve been doing the same thing in class. I also think that it’s great that other people are beginning to look into ways to start their own website. It opens many doors that the average Joe may be missing out on.



· One topic that I have seen more coverage on in the news is Phishing. We have touched on phishing in class and I thought it was worth listening to these reports. It started out on the local CBS news station and eventually led me to another article on Yahoo. The local CBS station stated that “most people fall prey to scam because of their lack of knowledge” and innocence. This was also stated in the Yahoo article along with “visual deceptions, and inattention to detail.” Since most college students are on the internet several times during the course of their day, I thought it would be a great article to read and react to. There are several points in the article that tell a user how to recognize that they are on a safe site. Some of these are padlocks at the end of the address bar, or an “s” at the end of http. So a secure site could/should have https:// at the beginning. It continues by showing some examples of things you should look for in Phishing and tips to avoid falling into a trap. I think that this news was great and very informative. It provided me with some ways to recognize potential threats and allowed me to protect myself against future attempts.


· Everyone knows librarians are important to both education and society as a whole, but this article that I found on the American Library Association’s (ALA) website was very interesting and good news for all Librarians.
The “Librarian Incentive to Boost Recruitment and Retention in Areas of Need (LIBRARIAN) Act of 2007 was introduced in both the U.S. Senate (S. 1121) and the House of Representatives (H.R. 1877).” This quote, directly from the ALA website, shows how important Librarians are to society and shows that people recognize this. As the title of the bill states, this act was introduced in hopes boosting recruitment in the field by offering the Perkins loan forgiveness, which is kind of confusing to me, but to most Librarians is probably a known term and offers somewhat of financial help to librarians whos salary is not on a level playing field as the importance of their job. Even though I found this article on a random tangent, I am very glad that I read it because it opened my eyes to the importance of Librarians. I am supportive of this act because I think the jobs salary pertains a lot to the library you work at, but regardless, it is an important job to society and one that needs to be more recognized.
http://www.ala.org//



· One of the latest articles that I found interesting was about China’s attempt to censor the internet. I found this article on MSNBC’s homepage under the Technology heading. Chinese President Hu Jintao is hoping to censor the internet in a way that would rid it of any “unhealthy” material. In 2006 alone, China’s internet users grew by some 23 percent. Their internet market is one of the most booming in the world and is obviously attracting a lot of attention from many large internet companies. The article goes on to explain how China censors its internet in a way that allows users only to see the type of information that the Communist led China wants them to. This is where my problem with the system comes in. China isn’t trying to just censor “bad” material, but any material that contains opinions, probably those against the Communist party or any sites that may prove to be discrediting to anything dealing with China. Therefore they are just giving these internet users a type of “tunnel vision.” By tunnel vision I mean showing these users exactly what they want them to see and nothing more. I could agree with censoring of disturbing material, but not this type of censorship.



· With National Library week coming to an end (April 15-27), I found an article on the American Library Association’s website dealing with this special week. To find this article you can go to ALA’s website, and scroll down. You will see the link to the article,“Communities ‘Come together @ your library’ to celebratethe changing role of libraries.” This week was based on becoming more like popular hang out spots but with the slight difference of being free. If you go to any internet café or Barnes and Noble type store, you will often have to pay for any of their services that you use. With Libraries, you get most of these same resources for free. The article also states that “almost 1.8 billion visitors checked out more than 2 billion items last year.” This is a very impressive figure for libraries, and lets society as a whole know how important libraries are. Before I came to college I hardly ever would visit a library unless required by a class. After attending college and realizing how great they are, I’m sure that I will begin to use them more in my life, in and out of school. I also believe that the word is getting out as to the resources that libraries offer. Like I said earlier, many people pay for the services that the library can offer for free. The information contained in a library can usually be counted on for its integrity more than something you may find in Barnes and Nobles. This is a great week for the nation, and does a great job of getting the word out as to the importance and usefulness of libraries.



· I found an article pertaining to Google buying YouTube by searching Yahoo for “Google buys YouTube” after reading about the purchase through the article that is covered in the news story on DoubleClick. The article I found is through a website named ars technica. The actual page can be found at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061009-7942.html. The writers report that Google purchased the famous YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion in stock. Most people would be wonder why they would purchase it in stock instead of cash, but it has many advantages to cash. I agree with the move to purchase with stock instead of actual cash. It was a better move for YouTube because the income is tax-free. It is an advantage for Google because the value of their stock can always increase, bringing them more income. Both parties felt that this was a very good deal feeling that it would help both companies expand rapidly.




· I couldn’t help but write about this article after touching on a previous article in which Sports Illustrated had failed to mail an estimated 21,000 institutions the Swimsuit Edition of their monthly magazine. After a statement from ALA president, Leslie Burger, Time Inc. rethought their decision and apologized for making the decision within the company instead of giving the institutions an opportunity to make this decision for their selves. The library then thanked Time Inc. by saying, “The ALA is pleased that Time Inc. reconsidered its position regarding this matter… we appreciate that Time Inc. supports ALA's efforts to protect library users' ability to judge the material for themselves." I felt like this was a good move on both sides. The statement first released by Mrs. Burger was very well spoken and to the point. Upon reading this statement I’m sure that Time Inc. saw ALA’s side and admitted their mistake.
If anyone is interested in reading more about this event, they can visit the ALA website at ala.org, and can look under the archives for March.

Web Hoax and More

This article was more shocking to me than anything else I’ve read in this class thus far. Even though we have begun to talk about misinformation and knowing where your information is coming from, this was still very eye-opening. In class we discussed how Fox owns so many different networks that they can give out slightly slandered information for their benefit without anyone knowing. The only way combat these actions is to gain your information from a variety of sources.
Instead of focusing on the misinformation, this article looks more at how the internet holds many sites that are hoax’s or very misleading. These misleading websites are set up in such a way that they try to pass as sites dedicated to gaining factual information on a subject of interest. One such site that the article looks at is martinlutherking.org. When I first read the site name and saw the .org at the end, I automatically assumed that it was a reliable site for information pertaining to Martin Luther King Jr., but upon a little more research I found out that it was anything but reliable. The .org that goes on the end of many websites such as www.gov.org, which is about the US government, doesn’t necessarily make any of the information true. In fact, this site about Martin Luther King Jr. was made by a group of white nationalists who were trying to preserve their “white western culture.”
Now upon reading further into one such website, the average student could realize that this information might be somewhat biased. Now for a young student who doesn’t know much about the misleading information the internet can provide, this website could have had a large impact on their beliefs. The rest of this article basically goes through more types of web deceits and basically gives the reader a little insight into what bad information is out there on the World Wide Web.
From this article I gained a lot of knowledge as to what you can and can’t always believe. I should never take a website as being completely factual without checking a few others on the same subject. Gaining information from more than one source will provide me with a better overall understanding of the subject at hand. It will also give me a way to kind of check certain websites reliability for future research opportunities.

WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia is a very broad, encyclopedia-like database that many access online. It is very interesting that many different professors can offer their expertise to the site and this makes me curious and drew me into the article. This article discusses the many different aspects of Wikipedia, while offering opinions of whether it is a good or bad site for excellent information. While the site at first was based towards gaining quantity, the founders have begun to migrate away from that and concentrate more on the quality and accuracy of the information. The article says that the website is trying to encourage many scholars to contribute to the articles. Some are responding with the attitude “if you can’t beat them, join them.”
The fact that this type of site is thriving kind of bothers me. It raises many questions to me that I don’t think anyone can answer with one hundred percent honesty. This lack of credited information leaves me wondering how a regular web browser like myself could tell good information from bad on this website. After reading this I am a little worried because I know for a fact that I have used some information off of Wikipedia for research papers, believing the information was factual and not just opinionated. The way the site is set up, the average user is led to believe that this website is just like an encyclopedia. It has everything from pronunciation to alter meanings. I think that this website should be held for the quality of the information they are providing users because otherwise it is a waste of students time to use this website for anything more than pure humor.

The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google

Reading number three offered a very eye-opening view of the direction research is heading for the average college student. It offers it in a unique manor that caught my attention. It compared the mass amounts of low quality information Google searches may offer, to that of the fast food industry. I agree with most of the points they make in the article, especially when they refer to students using search engines, such as Google, because it’s quick, easy, and doesn’t take a rocket scientist to operate. With that statement comes a point that I would like to touch on. I believe most students use search engines for research because of their inability to use Library resources. This is exactly why taking this class has really opened my eyes into the vast amount of high quality information the library has to offer. It has also shown me various ways to access this information in ways that will speed up my research process.
Many projects been started, hoping to make the library databases easier to use and more student friendly. I think these projects are great ideas, but I think that there are better ways of getting students to use their libraries more often for research. The best way I think to go about this is making a library class like the one we are taking now, a required course. I can not stress enough how beneficial this class has been to my knowledge of how to use libraries for my benefit. I would recommend these types of classes to anyone because they improve one’s ability to use the best available resources for research.

Students shun search for information

In this article many interesting aspects are brought up about society today and the way they use the internet for almost all of their needs. Information is what the internet was founded on, and since it is so quick and easy to find a topic you are thinking about, many people don’t care to put in the time needed to do the same at the library. Even though the sources may be somewhat incorrect on the internet, many people don’t take this into account when doing a project for school.
This article also states that some people think the internet sources can be good because they bring other sides of the issue into light. I believe that this is just fishing for something to back the internets usefulness up. I don’t know of many textbooks used in the classroom that have biased opinions. If they do, most teachers use it as a teaching tool to start conversations among the class. But when the student uses the internet, there is no way of knowing how true the information is. Most of us are not specialized in those areas of study like that of a teacher, so we are forced to use theses sources, unless we are able to visit the library.
In conclusion, I think that the library is the best source for information but just not the easiest to access at times. The internet is like the McDonald’s of the food industry. It may not be as good tasting, healthy, or satisfying as a dining experience at a nice restaurant, but its quick and convenient and that’s what people tend to like.

My biblio is going to be on Gun Control

As this article shows, libraries have been around for a very long time and play a key role in the history of America. For some it is small libraries at school or work from which they can receive or conduct research. For others it is Universities and government agencies that have wide arrays of subjects for every type of person. The people that can tell you most about the library and how it works are the librarians.
Librarians know better than anyone how facts technology is growing and expanding. They are constantly put to the test to keep their collections updated and working in the most efficient way possible. The article touches on this structure of the information infrastructure as being a process. This process begins with the creation of information through acts or knowledge and ends with someone actually using this information.
Without the libraries key structure, information received would be very inaccessible or take a long time to find. Society as a whole would have a rough time finding information they need to conduct research or even anything to read at all. Great amounts of the information systems used by the library are being converted online. Some believe this is getting away form the traditional way libraries conducted their business, but if society looks at it as just advancing with technology, then it is obvious that it is a necessity. Without the internet, accessing this large amount of data and information would be near impossible.
The way that libraries are starting to structure aged material is also helping their organization, as well as preserving documents that would have otherwise been extinct. When someone looks at all of the good done by the library system, no one can argue that it is a well oiled machine that has been tweaked to perfection

1)I woke up at 6:00 this morning thanks to my phones alarm clock. This is considered information or technology because my phone had to be able to tell what time it was in order to wake me up.
2) I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth and the toothbrush starts a timer when I turn it on to tell me when I have been brushing for the 2:00 recommended minutes. That is information it is telling me.
3) Unfortunately the same happened when I got in my car to go to work. My car gave me the information that my gas was low and I needed to get more because it turned on the gas light.
4) When I got to the gas station to fill up my car I had to select what grade of fuel I wanted to get. The options were shown...93, 89, & 87. So I used the info provided and pressed the button to select 89.
5) When I went inside to pay I used my visa. Visa's are full of information....the moment I swipe info is sent telling the bank how much I spent.
6) When I get to work I have a keycode I have to punch into the door to unlock it. This is information because the computer chip reads the entry and then either unlocks the door or keeps it locked.
7) Once inside its time to clock in....Our timeclock reads you handprint/fingerprints to tell whether it is you. This is very upadated technology because it actualy determines alot and has to store the info from previous times.
8) When we run out of sand at my work I have to go to maitenence and obtain more. After doing so I have to go to a computer and subtract the invetory to let them know when to order more. This info is very important.
9) After I leave work I headed straight to wag to grab a bite to eat. In order to get in I have to swipe my student I.D. This card lets the attendant know electronically what I have paid for meal wise.
10) Once I am in I get a Sandwich which has to be toasted...At the end of 60 seconds a buzzer goes off to let them know that the sandwich is done.
11)When I get back I have to scan my student ID again to get into the Seahawk Village. The scan tells the computer that I live in the building and unlocks the door.
12) After getting settled in I check my phone and it has a note to let me know that I have missed 5 calls and have a few new voicemails.
13) When I start checking my voicemail the operator tells me that my mailbox is full and that I must delete some messages... This info is very usefull because without it I would be unable to recieve any more messages.
14)When I start to relax I turn on the television. My remote control sends my TV information telling it to turn on and change channels. This info isn't needed but definately makes a difference.
15) After watching some TV I begin to play some Xbox. Information is processed all through this system. It is actually quite impressive how much is processed. I can make people move, jump, or run just at a touch of a button.