Life in the Network: Week1: History Archives

My Late Start

Hi everyone, I’m sorry that this is so late. I joined the class late, and have had some technical difficulties.

My name is Scott Szesterniak. I am a full-time student majoring in Marketing and PR. This is my last semester of school, so I’m going to try and make the most out of it. Outside of school I find myself partaking in various sporting activities, and watching a fairly decent amount of TV. I’ve just recently started watching the show Heroes, which I give two thumbs up. Some “interesting” facts about me…..Hmmmm…. Well…My real name is Peter, but I’ve always gone by my middle name, Scott.

The first computer I used was the good ol’ Apple IIGS. I thought it was pretty cool at the time, but then again, so was wearing zooba pants. However, the first interaction I had with the internet was not with that particular computer, which by the way I had until my 8th grade year. I believe my first internet experience was in computer class my 7th grade year. This is where I learned the concept surfing the web, and how to follow the protocol needed to do it. It only took a few days before I was getting kicked out of class for being on sites that I shouldn’t have. While I knew what I did was wrong, I also knew something else; Our Apple IIGS at home couldn’t do that! After a year of telling my dad that our home computer was outdated, we went out and had a PC built for us. I distinctly remember loading AOL on it, so we could surf the web. Eventually, I started downloading MP3’s, and the use of yahoo! became a great search tool to aid me with my homework.

I currently use the internet as my primary source of information, and secondary source for entertainment. However, until reading the article, I was never familiar with the concept of WEB 2.0. I have been able to recognize that the internet has become much more interactive and user friendly in the past couple years. I look forward to the effects that the concept WEB 2.0 will continue to have on the internet.

Posted by Pseudonym at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Live, from D.C.

Sorry this is late, I'll try to catch up fast...
While I am in Washington, D.C. for the semester, I was born and raised near a small south-central Minnesota town on a farm. While I am actually a full-time student, this is my only "real" class for the semester, which I just added last night as I realized I will have enough time after all. My only other class is my internship, which I am taking out here with the House Agriculture Committee. My life is headed that way whether I like it or not (and I do), and I thought an internship out here would compliment my Agricultural Education (non-teaching) major. While I have only been in D.C. for a couple of weeks, my only hobbies are work and Internet, until I make some friends. Back home I enjoy sports, both participating in intra-murals and being a spectator of professional or Gopher sports.
I guess living out here is interesting, as I am living literally 3 blocks from the U.S. Capitol (and walk through it's basement on my way to work).

I was the first person to have the Internet in my 5th grade class. My first year was basically checking it out and playing some games. I had a hotmail account from day one, and MSN Messenger followed soon after. I taught myself HTML in 6th grade, and made a website (a very basic website) for my church in 8th grade. I stuck with the Internet through high school, but lost interest in the programming side as I did more and more agricultural activities. One thing about HTML is that it is easy to remember once to learn it, because the language is so unlike anything and is pretty straight forward. For instance, I understand the tags that this editor makes when I want to make a link. I am addicted to Firefox, Facebook and Gmail, and now that I have a job in a House Office Building, I do not know what would happen to our country without Internet and Blackberrys. I also have a blog on Blogspot where I can communicate easily with friends and family about my daily experiences out here.

Although I use the web daily, I am not familiar with the concept of Web 2.0. I have seen the obvious changes the article talks about, but of course you cannot draw a firm line between the two concepts. The user-friendliness and amount of user-interactive websites has of course increased dramatically, but I would have to agree with Blender and the article that the biggest difference was from trying to turn a page of the Internet into a store, library, or something we already have in Web 1.0 (keeping the Internet, as software, at a standstill), and we now are using our knowledge to create a better Internet. I enjoy:
My blog, as it saves me cell phone minutes
Facebook, so I know what my friends are up to, and what they have taken crazy pictures of
Gmail, for its 3 GB of storage (more than my first computers)
Craigslist, for being eBay's free evil step-brother
and Nike+, which is a running program integrated into your shoes, to see your distance and time of running. All set to the music of your iPod.

Continue reading "Live, from D.C." »

Posted by William at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Programmer, Snowboarder

Apologies for the late entry, I too had a few technical difficulties. My name is Zach Snow, and I am a senior computer science major. I will be graduating at the end of this semester, and hopefully attending graduate school next fall. I also work on two different projects in the department. One of these projects, called Sharescape, seems to be related to this class. The project aims at creating an online community centered on tagging locations (depicted on a Google map) with useful information. I am also an avid snowboarder, and I like to build things out of wood (though I wouldn’t claim to be a carpenter). I also always put periods at the end of sentences, regardless of quotation marks or parentheses, because it seems more logical.

I can’t remember exactly when I got my first computer, but I remember it was an IBM 486, running Windows for Workgroups 3.11. However, I spent most of my time on the machine playing with the QBASIC interpreted it had. I also played a few games, and even tried my hand at writing one or two.

I first connected to the internet using Prodigy with a 9600 baud modem, however it was a very solitary experience: I didn’t enjoy chatting with strangers, and I had no friends with internet connections.

Most of my opinions on “the web” and Web 2.0 have been form in a vacuum, with very little discussion with others. Therefore I am excited to gain new perspectives on the efficacy of Web 2.0. I certainly agree that interactive websites have certainly become major players in our culture. And I agree that that Web 2.0 has “generally transformed user experiences online”, though I am unsure whether this has been a good thing. Oftentimes it seems that certain Web 2.0 technologies and tools are overused, with website designers adding interactive technologies when the site is really only intended to be informational. In my opinion this often detracts from the information quality and ease of access.

And for the survey:

Posted by Zach at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally, I'm in!!!

Hello everyone. Sorry this is a bit late, but I had some technical difficulties entering into the course website. My name is Erin Milbrath and I am a senior in the Human Resource Development undergraduate program. I currently work full time as a Human Resources Coordinator at Opus Corporation in Minnetonka, MN. Opus is a full service real estate and construction company. One of their finished projects includes the Best Buy Headquarters in Edina, MN. As a Human Resources Coordinator I assist the various departments within the HR Department. Currently I’m working on many compensation and benefits projects, but am soon going to be transitioning into the training and development department helping design and implement various training programs for our organization. In my spare time I enjoy traveling, hanging out with friends, and of course playing with my new puppy Lola, who is a puggle. Puppies are A LOT of work but are great company to have.

My first computing experience was probably back when I was in elementary school, which was over 10 years ago. I remember playing various educational and learning games such as Word Munchers and Number Munchers and fun leisure games such as Oregon Trail and the Lemonade Stand game. My parents first purchased a computer for my sister and me when I was in the 4th grade. It was a Macintosh because my Uncle was and is a Mac/Apple fanatic and influenced my parents to purchase a Mac verse a PC. I was probably one of the last people to get the Internet out of all of my friends. My friends and I would spend hours at each other’s houses on American Online and chatting in various chat rooms. It took probably years to influence my parents in purchasing the Internet, but they finally did and we haven’t been living without it since. I must say that I was very fascinated with the possibilities the Internet let individuals do as far as: purchasing items, communicating with family/friends/strangers around the world, and the amount of resources on just about any topic you can think of.

After reading the article on Web 2.0 it made me reflect on how the Internet has really changed over the years. Web 2.0 I feel is more interactive and not so much informative. People are able to create and post just about anything. For example the Facebook and MySpace are two huge interactive programs that have become extremely popular within the past few years. For me, these two programs have become a thing I check almost 2-3 times a day. Thus Web 2.0 definitely plays an influence on people’s everyday lives, and I would even go to say that it has influenced our culture. It will be very interesting to see what the next 5-6 years will bring as far as improvements and advancements to the Internet.

Continue reading "Finally, I'm in!!!" »

Posted by EKM040 at 04:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Some folks still write on paper...

Hi everyone. If the lateness of this post could be any more telling about my internet habits I'd be set. My name is Andrew Ranallo and I'm a senior at the U majoring in English and American Indian Studies (mainly in the study and revitalization program for the Ojibwe Language).
I definately have a long history with computers and the internet but interestingly my understanding of some of the new concepts plateaued along with my interest in the new features of technology. I remember the black floppys with pen written titles, and putting them in my apple gave me nothing but some kind of prompt. When I was a young roustabout I would work at it until I got those games to work. Usually they were the kind where you say things like "Go East" and then it would respond with "You see a hermit with a cat." and you would say "Take Cat." and it would say "You cannot take Cat." and that's when I would usually shut it off.
Then my Mom, a few years later got an ISP called WOW and we'd collect URLs in an envelope becasue we looked at them like strange codes that would only work if entered perfectly. This was before Google even entered the webosphere. So I'd clip URL's from magazines and I distinctly remember how slowly but surely I started to see more and more of them, and began to realize that many variables could go between "www." and ".com" and my big envelope of URLs was kind of pointless.
Moving on, to me Web 2.0 does seem like a simple buzzword made to alienate those without high-speed internet and perhaps boost internet investments and capital. Perhaps define the digital divide a little more clearly. "What, you don't have DSL? Whaaaat? You don't use wikipedia?" I don't mean to sound sure, because, as much as it seems this way to me, when a term is applied, and then used by the general population with a definite (albeit broad) definition in mind, how can it'svalidity or existence be questioned? I think vast improvements have come across the electronic world we spend so much of our waking time in though along with everything that makes our time easier and more secure comes something like this http://secondlife.com/ that makes me question the goal of advancing technologies, and more importantly, the real outcome, intended or not.

Posted by Andrew at 06:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is my post

Hello my name is Nick Johnson and I am turning this in really close to the deadline as you can well see. Story of my life. A little bit about me: I am a full time student hopefully graduating this spring with a degree in Economics. I enjoy camping, canoeing, rock climbing, movies, music, concerts, and much more.

I came along on the internet during approximately the 8th grade in which the internet at the time was quite developed. Most people at the time already had internet and aol instant messenger and the like. All of my friends had email accounts as well. I was using a computer with windows 98 if I remember correctly and it had an earlier version of internet explorer.

Web 2.0 to me (after reading this article, previous knowledge, and other websites) seems to be a general interactive experience whereas the original form of the internet was more single sided. In the original internet a site would be created by some entity and you would read/view its contents and that’s all that would come from it. Web 2.0 is more of an interactive experience such as noted by the person who coined the term Tim O’Reilly. His original thoughts on it were for it to be a sort of conferencing device. It has since evolved into a million different ways of interaction such as Wikipedia (my favorite site), various social networking sites such as facebook or myspace, and much more. It is my opinion that web 2.0 is accomplishing what the internet originally was set out to create in a more interconnected world.

On a side note I think it is a fantastic thing as I find it a very similar concept to open-source software which I have ALWAYS been a huge proponent.

And here is my survey, hopefully it works

Posted by NickJ at 05:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Squeezed in before the deadline...

I had this all typed up, and then went back a page and erased it all. Anyways, hi, my name is Matt Erickson, and I am a sophomore and art history major here at the U. This is not my first time blogging, although in previous blogging experiances I haven't had the need to punctuate properly (i used to blog using all lowercase, and only using commas and periods).

My first experiance with a computer was with the internet. In 1991 I played a game on a Packard Bell (I don't know the specs) which I learned tonight was called MadMaze, here is a link to a recreation of the game: http://pages.prodigy.net/rdbrownmsb/MadMaze2/. MadMaze was a game run using prodigy, and playing this game is one of my earliest memories. Since then I've played many other games over the internet, such as Diablo, Starcraft, Day of Defeat, World of Warcraft, CS: Source.

The Internet has seemed to have gotten more simple to use in the past few years (four of five?), but I never would have thought to label what the internet has become as Web 2.0. If Web 2.0 means that the internet is getting more and more simple, or user friendly, then I see it as a good thing. I use the internet for a variety of things. I read most of the news online; if anyone is looking for an interesting website for news I would suggest www.poe-news.com. Some other websties that I use are Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Wikipedia.com, imdb.com, and many others.

Posted by eric1608 at 05:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Internet: Thanks for everything.

Howdy, everyone. My name is Paul Treiber, and I am an internet junkie. I'm in my fourth year of college and second at the U of M. I used to be a Computer Science major, but after a year in the major, I found that I liked language better. Currently, I'm a full-time student majoring in Asian Languages and Literature (Japanese Subplan). I hope to teach English in Japan, China, and Korea after graduating. After soaking in as much language and culture as I can from those three countries, I would like to become an interpreter. I enjoy all kinds of music, but my favorite is classical--especially Bach (I know, technically, he's baroque), Beethoven, Chopin, and Rachmaninov. I love to play piano, but I'm a little out of practice since coming to college. I also love to read nonfiction, biographies, online comics, history, and classic novels. I love camping, but I haven't really been out of the city in the last year. I have actually worked for an online university for the last four years, so I'm very curious to finally participate in an online course.

I miss command-line interface (I was so used to DOS 6.0) and BBSes. I began keeping a journal at the age of 5 on my parents' first computer, which had a chip that ran at about...20 MHz, if I remember correctly. It also had two 5-inch floppy drives and a green monochrome monitor. In 1992, we got a computer with a 386 chip (a whooping 33 MHz!), 3.5 inch floppy drive, and a color monitor. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D, Gorillas, and Snakes (the last two are games in BASIC! Woo!). I enjoyed creating macros in DOS, writing short stories, and making short songs using the beep function in DOS (I got carried away once and wrote out Für Elise...) Our uncle upgraded his modem in '92 or '93 and sent us his old 2400 baud modem--8 times better than our 300 baud one! My family went to the library often when I was very young, and my dad always picked up the newest issue of Computer User. In the back, there were listings for local BBSes, and many of them had simple games. At the age of 8, I began to play "door games" such as Exitilus, Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD), Planets, Trade Wars, The Pit, and many more on these BBSes. They had daily limits on your actions, such as being able to search for monsters to fight only 30 times, and this limit was reset every day at midnight. I got so involved in these games that, for a while, I would set the alarm on my watch for midnight and go play whichever game was my favorite at the time until I ran out of turns. Around the same time, we found out that we could make library reservations by dialing into the library BBS. We could also surf the limited web through it, but only by using text commands (awesome!). Even though I was only 9 or so by that point, and it was text-only, I was completely captivated. Little did I imagine the possibilities that have been realized in today's internet.

O'Reilly's comparison of the ongoing development of the internet to the formation of synapses in the brain makes so much sense. I thought it was a great metaphor for one of the central ideas of Web 2.0: users are ultimately going to improve the internet through their sheer numbers. Through email/text/blog/comment, they not only help draw more people to interesting and useful sites, but they also help improve content and services for all users. This is what amazes me most about Web 2.0: continual improvement in which any user can participate! Although there are plenty of users who do not make positive contributions (I stay far, far away from most discussion boards), sites like Wikipedia, eBay, and Google have expanded the possibilties for user involvement in a profound way. I see it as a great chance for people to participate in democratic action, because even one person can have a tangible effect on those services. Web 1.0 was machine-based, and thus was limited by the collective imagination and intelligence of its designers. Web 2.0 is user-based and does not have that limitation (not that it does not have any). I regularly use Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, CNet, and Pandora.

Posted by Russian Leprechaun at 04:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not a noob....

I’m slow on the draw, but I’ve finally gotten around to my fabulous introductory blog post. This is not my first time blogging, so I can’t really use that as an excuse for my late posting, so I hope that you will forgive me. I am a senior in Scientific and Technical Communication, set to graduate in May with my BS. (I won’t even tell you how many jokes my dad has made about the fact that I’m getting a ‘BS’ from the Rhetoric department.) I just returned from a semester in Sydney, Australia, so if I insert a few “crikeys!” and “g’days” into my posts, you will just have to go along with it. Let’s see…for fun…I like to bake all sorts of sweets, go to concerts, snowboard and read any book that may strike my interest. I hope this gives you a little more insight into who I am as a person. Now I will give you a little more background on my ‘net history’.

I started using the internet in 4th grade for ‘research’ projects. This was back in 1994 when the internet was a scary and dangerous place for us little 4th graders to be wandering around unsupervised. Prior to that, most of my computing experience was word processing on an ancient IBM that I recall using DOS commands on. After my intro to the internet via research in the library, my real ‘use’ began in middle school when I got my first hotmail account and eventually AIM. (My typing teachers that I had from 4th-7th grade would be very upset to hear this, but it wasn’t until instant messaging that my typing vastly improved. The best part about this is that I’m seeing the same thing with my little brothers who are in 4th and 7th grade.)

I’m still a bit foggy on this whole concept of “Web 2.0”, but I think that if I look at how my experiences with the internet have changed over the years, I can say that it has definitely made a difference in the way that I utilize the internet. Before I came to college, the internet was a novelty, now it seems a necessity. I check the weather, news, my email, pay my bills, buy things and entertain myself with the internet. I have a personalized Google page, I use torrent sites, Wikipedia, am Facebook obsessed and rarely go to the library thanks to Google scholar and the online journal archives that the U of M subscribes to.

I am really looking forward to this course and getting to know all of you through your blogs. In the meantime, I’m going to test your political savvy in terms of the great country of Australia. Cheers!

Posted by Mädchen at 04:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Survey Fix

Okay I'm trying my survey again. Apparently I didn't get all of the code.

Posted by JuliaT at 03:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You are now entering the blogosphere

Hello everyone, nice to meet you. My name is Travis Carr, I’m a third year student, full time, from Blaine, Minnesota (a suburb about 20 minutes north of campus)I’m majoring in English but a bigger passion of mine is music, which I’m completely in love with. I play drums in a band named daybreak. We played at the Whole in Coffman a year or two ago with band we’re good friends with; to my knowledge it was close to selling out and the biggest show they had had there, but I didn’t get that first hand so I’m not positive.

I remember my family got our first computer as a family gift one Christmas, and I was on it a fair amount. I don’t remember what service we used to connect to the internet, but I distinctly remember the (now depressing) fact that the only website I visited when we first got access to the internet was Hollywood.com, simply because a friend showed it to me and I didn’t know what else to do online. I suppose in the development of the net I would consider myself as coming along sometime during the tail end of the dot-com bubble. My family was never really on the forefront of technology.

Although I get confused in some of the specifics of what qualifies as Web 2.0 and what doesn’t, I think it has greatly changed user experiences online. I definitely feel when I look at sites online that things seem a little more personalized and focused on the user. When Napster just became popular I was using it all the time; it opened a lot of doors for me to hear bands that I just wouldn’t be able to hear on the radio. Someone (I’m having trouble finding the entry again) said before me that Web 2.0 seemed like a logical next step for the internet, and I agree. I’m sure it won’t be long until we see another new generation of web applications as technology continues to evolve and entrepreneurs continue to create them.

At any rate, I apologize if my blog is coming in late. I look forward to working with all of you this semester!

Posted by TCarr at 03:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In with the new...

Hello all! Sorry that this is last minute, but boy o boy I have never blogged before. It took a while for me to find everything. I guess I’m not as good with computers as I thought I was. My name is Kelly Colbert and I am a third year at the University. I am studying Applied Economics and Marketing and finding that I really enjoy my classes. I hope to and plan on graduating in the spring of 2008 and heading out of the cold. I plan on moving to Colorado or Arizona where the sun shines a little bit more. I do enjoy the summers up in Minnesota but having nice weather year round would be wonderful. I just don’t really like walking to class with 8 layers on… I guess I am in the wrong state! I also love listening to music. I have to have it on at all times when I do anything! So if you know of any good bands or anything of the sort, let me know!

My first memory of computers was when I was slightly younger and in the first grade. We would have computer class each week and learn how to type on computers using Number Munchers and Mavis Beaken Teaches Typing. It was so amazing to me that I could press a button and it would show up on the screen. It was a huge step up from the typewriter that my family had at home. I guess I had a great experience with the computers at such a young age because I find myself constantly on my computer checking e-mails on an hourly basis and signed in to the AIM program all day every day. During middle school my friends and I would rush home from school and chat for hours on-line with our friends that we saw all day long at school. It was to the point that my mom had given me a time limit to be on the computer and would always tell me that the times are changing with the technology era.

I find myself being awestruck with our generation and the use of technology today. Everything that you could imagine is on the web and everything that is being advertised always has a .com address as well. I think many times of the progression of the internet that I have personally used; new updates for programs almost on a weekly basis and new and more efficient websites that help immensely for finding the information that I need. Also the speed of the modems that my family has gone through over the years is quite humorous when I look back. There would be days that I would click on a page to load, go make myself lunch and come back to the computer and the page still would not have loaded. As the article talked about, in just a few years modems will be a word of the past and everyone is going to have WiFi. Minneapolis in just a few years is going to have wireless for the whole city which is really going to change the way that people interact. Sitting out at Calhoun in the summer, everyone will be on their computer instead of the numerous activities that usually take place.

Web 2.0 really boggles my mind in more ways than just one. The amount of technology at our hands everyday who knows what my kids are going to be making fun of me the way that I sometimes tease my parents about the technology that they had growing up. Being able to create websites and having anything at your fingertips is quite amazing when you realize that the Web is not tangible. I am an avid user of on line shopping almost to the point that if they do not have it posted on their site many times I do not go to that particular store to purchase the item. I have also dedicated many hours to Ebay and Amazon browsing what’s new and personalized my own web pages through Facebook at Myspace; a whole new way to stay in touch with friends. The new technology that is coming out in an incredibly fast pace is exciting and yet a bit scary in that the world is becoming so dependent on the use of the web. Just a few decades ago, no one would have ever dreamed of taking a class on line. It would have been crazy talk. Web 2.0 is the new thing for now… but in the age of technology it seems like the new become the old very quickly.

Posted by Colb0083 at 02:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Does the Internet have a birthday

Does the Internet have a birthday?

The term internet is diverse. It is diverse among origin, definition, and application. Is defining the origin of the internet necessary or is it just an opportunity for individual’s or company’s claim to fame in the soon to be historical textbooks? I believe our pursuit to completely understand the internet reaches beyond textbook definitions and will leave us students and experts in suspense throughout this technological revolution. It is for this reason that I strongly proclaim there may be no existence of a birthday for the internet. Poor internet.

Perhaps the internet is nothing but a global network, with tools such as computers created to be a catalyst of human communications. Therefore in theory, maybe the internet is so abstract that it has no origin, nor any clear definition, and has been forever in existence.

Ian Peter states the following regarding email, “It was never invented; it evolved from very simple beginnings.” Yet later in the article it states that Ray Tomlinson was credited for inventing email in 1972. Perhaps this discrepancy of writings stems from a clear definition of what email is, the simple @ that was created for computers to communicate with one-another. My point is that perhaps there will not be a clear origin of the internet because even defining such a thing is too complex.

Through the dot.com frenzy, from Web1.0 to Web 2.0, and from Netscape to Google, the internet is ongoing and ever-changing. There never seems to be clear definitions or understandings but rather radical hype and on-going, ever changing applications. Web 2.0 to be has been transformational as it has allowed for the everyday users to create their own uses for internet. We no longer must subscribe to a system or software only to be confined to specific applications, paying high-prices to be part of this internet evolution. Through the ever changing need and creativity of the online users, Web 2.0 applications allow for the simplicity and expansion needed to maintain the interest and need of the user.

My experience with computers and the internet can be summed up similar to the history of the internet outlined by Ian Peter in his online writing, “History of the Internet.” Began as a concept and quickly moved into application through the use of computers, through the dot.com era, and into Web 2.0 and future applications. I began with personal thoughts that computers and internet technology was that of the government and not for everyday users. I never dreamed that a computer or the internet would be part of my daily life.

I was introduced to a computer through a friend at approximately the age of 8. Because her parents were teachers they encouraged us to put hours of play into the floppy disk game Grover Math. Before long I was in junior high, my family with our very own computer, and surfing the World Wide Web through Netscape. It began as a fascination with online chatting, and soon led to an academic resource. Soon libraries became ancient research facilities and the internet with it’s dot.com sites directed me to choosing a specific college to attend.

Throughout college the internet has become my favorite communication tool. It allowed me to do research papers, while sipping tea at the local coffee hotspot, and allowing my friends to send me online messages while I was too busy to attend local house parties. Today the internet accompanied with Web 2.0 applications serves as a catalyst to school and business applications. I am able to research job possibilities through the websites of local and global organizations. I am also able to gain work experience while being a fulltime student through online course work at the University of Minnesota.

Now to all my fellow bloggers. Sorry to put all my thoughts of the reading at the beginning but that is the most critical to my grade so I saved my personal introduction to the end.

My name is Amber Rose. I am a senior here at the U of M and look forward to finding a job that is accessible world wide. I believe the tool that will accompany this goal is the internet and thus I am taking this course. I am also taking this course as it will challenge my frustrations with the complexity of the internet and its’ applications. Please be patient with these frustrations through my blogs. (only kidding!) The best of luck to all of us!

Continue reading "Does the Internet have a birthday" »

Posted by GlobalNetwork at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello class, sorry I'm late.

Hello everyone, from positively 4th Street, S.E.
Yes, this is my first time as a blogger, and yes, it did take me over a few days to figure it out, but now all is well. Anyway, my name is Eddie Olson, I am currently a junior, majoring in S&TC. So far it has been a great year. About a week ago I came back to the USA after spending six months living and studying in Vienna, Austria. As well as traveling around Europe, it was great! I am currently trying to get back into the USA life style, finishing moving in to my new place, getting back into school mode, and finding a job. Life is great.

I recall in elementary school playing the game Oregon Trail, that is my first memory of consistently using a computer. But besides playing games, I got to know computers during the early years of my schooling with typing classes and such. I believe my family got a computer when I was in 8th grade; that was the time when AOL was the thing to do. Looking back, thanks to my time on AOL chatting with my online buddies, I learned how to really type quickly. Sure the internet was very slow, but it was all we knew. Today I rarely if ever use an instant messaging system, but instead I will occasionally log onto the facebook.. yes I admit it.

I have experienced the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. at my fingertips. And though I consider “web 2.0” just to be another name for the “more advanced/evolved web we already knew,” I must say I like it. It is more user friendly and much more efficient regarding usability. With so much stuff on the web today, it is just fun to imagine what the “web 3.0” will be like.

For free streaming movies, tv shows or what not, check out these sites:
www.peekvid.com, www.tv-links.co.uk, or search them at dailymotion.com

Peace

Posted by Hecktic at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My First Time Blogging

Hi everyone my name is Dawn Luhmann. I am a full time student majoring in Agricultural Industries and Marketing. This is my final semester at the University because I am graduating after four wonderful years. Besides school, I work two part time jobs on campus one in research and as a library assistant. Other then school and working I love spending time with my family and friends. My family is my number one priority. I also enjoy traveling both in the states as well as abroad. I have been to Holland as well as just returning this last Monday from two weeks in Costa Rica.

When looking back the first computer I ever used was the old Macintosh green computers. This was when I was in elementary school. I had just used it to type. Then our school moved in with the internet but it was a very slow connection. We mainly only used it for research projects but were limited on our time limits. Growing up I never had a computer at my house till I was in my sophomore year in high school. Then we got internet my junior year. I just had used it to chat on MSN. Now I use it everyday for everything from email, research, reading the paper, and staying connected to my host family abroad.

Web 2.0 is very interesting but takes time to learn and understand. For me I see it as a huge umbrella. Everything fits under it somewhere it is just a matter of understanding it and using it correctly and perfectly.

Continue reading "My First Time Blogging" »

Posted by Dawn at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy Blogging!! Done it once or twice....

Hi my name is Jamie Johnson and I am senior here at the U and 22 years old. I am just finishing up my math degree, and possibly looking at finishing up a Mechanical engineering degree also. To be perfectly honest I am taking this class to help fill some elective credits and it fits into my schedule since I work alot. My current jobs involve being a DJ for parties on the weekend, working at a custom car shop during the week and trying to go to school full time. Besides my hectic work schedule I snowboard as much as possible and I have also been playing piano for around 13-14 years. Some other interesting tid-bits about myself is that me and a buddy just came back from a snowboarding trip in California and got stuck in the snow storm in Wyoming and witnessed around 4 accidents with semitrucks, but we made it fine, so happy blogging to all!

Continue reading "Happy Blogging!! Done it once or twice...." »

Posted by James Johnson at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

the other side of Web 2.0

As Matt pointed out, the idea of Web 2.0 isn’t exactly universally embraced or revered on the web. This list of Web 2.0 humor that he pointed to is worth clicking around in. The language isn’t exactly pristine, but it’ll give you a sense of some of the criticisms of the concept.

Posted by Krista at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello Class

Hi there. I am Julie Swenson. I consider myself a super senior at the U. My major is Communications, with a 'minor' in Applied Business. I am self-employed as a Freelance Makeup Artist and Hairstylist, as well as a Salon/Spa/Beauty Industry Consultant. I turned 30 last year and am at peace with the grey hairs, cellulite and wrinkles that keep appearing daily. My husband and I are expecting in July of this year.

My first experience on a computer was around the age of 7. At that time we were either using IBM or Apples. I remember playing Number Munchers and Oregon Trail. It wasn't until my freshman year at the U of M (1995) that I started using the internet, mostly for research and e-mail.
I still use both a PC (desktop) and a MAC (laptop).

I believe Web 2.0 was the next (inevitable) evolution for the dot.com industry. Web 2.0 meets the demands of the internet's audience with benefits such as advanced data management, participation, and free services. I regularly use Craigslist to advertise my business, Amazon to buy books and materials for my business, MySpace to keep my social life going, and YouTube for entertainment.
However, I am still using old applications such as Evite and Ofoto. Because I am not on the internet often, I fall behind on the lastest and greatest.
This begs the question, what will Web 3.0 look like, and will Baby Boomers and Gen Xers be able to keep up? And further, with companies rushing to get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon without a strategic plan, how many of those companies will collapse?

Posted by Jdolla30 at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello to all!

Hi, my name is Carl, and I'm a sophomore here at the U who will be turning 20 years old this coming Monday. I am a full time student currently majoring in neuroscience, although recently I've been considering a major change to something keeping scientific aspects but involving more writing, hence why I'm in this class. I've lived most of my life in Chesterfield, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. I'm a fan of all three major St. Louis sports teams, the Rams, Blues, and especially the world champion St. Louis Cardinals (man, that still feels awesome to say after three months), and I also really enjoy going to the Metrodome to cheer on the Gopher football team when they're in season. I really like video games too, getting my first system, an NES, for my fifth birthday and having owned at least one console from every generation since then, including the current one now that I've been fortunate enough to track down a Wii when I was home over winter break. Actually, it's the first nonportable Nintendo system I've owned since the days of the N64. I'm also an anime fan with a pretty extensive collection of DVDs, although most are of shows that are currently on or once aired on Adult Swim. I also regularly attend anime club meetings here at the U (That's from 6:30-10:00 every Thursday night in 2-520 Moos Tower, for those interested)

I don't remember quite when I first started using the internet, but I definitely remember when 28.8 dialup modems were common. I also vaguely remember using some old, text-based email software on my dad's computer to write to "keypals" when I was a really little kid. That's probably my earliest memory of using the internet. I didn't really become a regular user until well into the graphical interface era. A friend of mine introduced me to the gamefaqs.com message boards, and for a while I would spend a lot of time online just looking through them without an account of my own. Eventually I got my own computer that I actually owned (as opposed to just using my dad's when he wasn't around), and I started actually posting on those boards and playing online games like Starcraft and Diablo II with my crappy little dialup connection, which by then was slowly starting to become outdated. Honestly, it took a while for my house to finally go high speed since we actually were not equipped to handle DSL for a while despite living in a suburban area, and my dad was reluctant to get cable. Eventually though, we did get DSL, and we've been happy with that ever since. Currently, I don't really use my GameFAQs account anymore, but I am a regular poster over on the adultswim.com forums, which I started using once I realized I was using GameFAQs more to talk about anime and other stuff other than video games.

I think Web 2.0 pretty much defines what the internet is today. Although I haven't necessarily heard of everything on O'Reilly's list, I certainly am well familiar with the big names like Google and Wikipedia. I will admit I mostly go to Wikipedia for entertainment rather than serious research purposes since most college courses don't consider articles from there legitimate, but it comes in handy for settling informal arguments on message boards. I couldn't help but notice that part of the required readings for another technical writing class I'm taking actually consisted of Wikipedia entries. I saw that and immediately thought of this class. The adultswim.com community does include a blog too, so the concept of keeping one isn't totally foreign to me, but still, it's nothing I really update that often, maybe once or twice a month at best. Bittorrent is also important in the anime community for distributing fansubs, files of unlicensed anime series episodes with English subtitles created by fans, which ordinarily wouldn't be available in the US until; some American company licenses it, dubs it, and puts it on DVD. I tend to stay away from using it myself, opting instead to buy DVDs and occasionally watch stuff on Youtube, but I definitely know many people who do, plus it's the only source of certain series we watch in club.

Alright, now with the survey...

Posted by cass0123 at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello! I am hoping this works!

Hi! My name is Kate, I am 21 and I will be graduating in the Spring! I will have a degree from the Carlson School of Management in Marketing. I currently work in Strategic Marketing at Thomson West, part time. After I graduate, I will go full time! I work on their website, www.west.thomson.com; more specifically, on SEO and banner merchandising. It is very exciting because I work on a team that is all new to making a website function better, and we get to learn together! For fun, I run, spend time with my family and friends, read, do crosswords, and I am also a 5K race organizer. Something unexpected about me is that I went to Africa a year ago!
My first experience with a computer was when I was probably 7. I learned to type using Mario teaches typing on a really old IBM, and then soon after that I remember our family getting AOL (circa 1993). I also remember playing games like Number Munchers, Oregon trail, and typing programs in grade school. The first online experience I can remember is figuring out what “IMing” was. My mom got mad when she realized I was talking to a complete stranger I had met in a “chat room.” I remember thinking typing was really cool, and someone once told my mom that it would be a blessing if I could learn how to type, because eventually, I would be able to type faster than I could write. And that meant I could get my thoughts out faster!

I think the concept of the Web 2.0 is brilliant! I think it is true that a new age has come for the internet. As I understood the article, what works and what doesn’t work online is becoming more clear. In my mind, the simpler a website is (little advertising like Craiglist and Google are the most successful because there is not a ton of clutter!) I think Web 2.0 has transformed users’ experiences and what they expect from the Web. Some Web 2.0 applications I use are Facebook, amazon.com, Google, Ebay, and Craigslist.

Life in the Network

January 30, 2007