The online sensation of the year, YouTube, has opened the door for all kinds of opportunities. From joining with CNN to allow voters to directly pose questions to presidential candidates, to allowing students to view class lectures when they can’t physically make it to class, YouTube and other online video sites can also have some negative effects.

For many people, these sites are a monumental waste of time. For others who are videoed and posted without their knowledge or consent, they are a source of embarrassment and anger. For a few others, online videos may be a cause for arrest or even evidence in a criminal trial.

The Motive
Typically, hoaxers and vandals want to work invisibly, but have the results of their work highly visible, to be “appreciated” by all. They may consider their work art, such as some graffiti artists, or may think what they have done is funny, and want all their friends, and even strangers, to be able to join in on the “joke.” All too often, these pranks are dangerous to the participants, the victims, the cameraman, and bystanders, and on occasion, what began as a joke turns into a serious calamity.

Alerting Authorities
While it is never the intention of the person posting the video online, viewers sometimes recognize the danger or the illegality of the actions caught on video and authorities are alerted. In general, police are tipped off by viewers about a suspicious video, and aren’t seeking out videos of illegal activities on their own.

Some do, however. One California Police Lieutenant asserted that police officers stationed at middle and high schools routinely search popular sites such as MySpace and YouTube for criminal activity such as drug or alcohol use, vandalism, or sexual assault. Read the rest of this entry »

If Web 2.0 jargon wasn’t enough to make you groan, you should really meet Web 3.0. The beauty of Web 3.0 is that most people, even the ones involved, are still a bit unclear as to what it is, exactly. But it is definitely an improvement over 2.0 and requires the standard amount of updates to Wikipedia and forum discussion. Web 3.0 is still in development, but any marketer worth his salt at least knows enough about it to throw the term around in conversation.

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 has become the universally accepted term for the socially modified internet. Websites that are “Web 2.0” integrate user feedback and commentary and work to connect users with each other and other applications and visitors from around the world. Bookmarking, wikis, blogs, and commentary are all heavy aspects of Web 2.0. But just as you are getting comfortable with the new social internet, Industry heavy hitters have gone and introduced Web 3.0.

Web 3.0
It is believed that Web 3.0 will be an early form of the semantic web. Currently, under Web 2.0, users can find all kinds of information on websites and share that information with others. Under 3.0, that same information will be assembled, organized and shared with other computers. Pages and content that can currently only be read by humans will be easily read by machines and bots. The data will then be used for any number of things. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a dramatic push for online education over the last decade. At first only the occasional correspondence class was offered online. Then certain colleges offered degrees, and now most colleges and universities include online classes alongside traditional classrooms. And even those traditional classrooms often have an online component. You are hard-pressed to find a college classroom that does not include something on the internet.

But these online education plans are not for everyone. This is a shame since there are few other alternatives. Rather than look for classes that are not online, it is far better to acclimate yourself to the online education environment.

Time Management
The biggest component of online education often presents itself as a stumbling block – time management. Online classes require you taking the time on a regular basis to read material, discuss topics on discussion boards, and send various assignments to an instructor. If you can’t delegate your time properly, you will have a very hard time completing a class and certainly a hard time succeeding in it.

The best way to overcome trouble with time management is to assign your classes times, much like you would if you were actually attended courses. Even if you are, in fact, going to class during the days, allot yourself a set time to complete any online components.

Set up a schedule and follow it. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday take care of two classes before lunch, and every Tuesday and Thursday take care of the rest after your afternoon nap. It doesn’t matter when you do it, just set up a routine so that you are in a pattern of work. This ensures the work gets done. Read the rest of this entry »

There is no doubt that a Master of Business Administration, or MBA, is more than a feather in your proverbial hat. An MBA opens up doors to greater success and tells employers that you are serious about your career and your own value. Of course, there are usually two rather substantial hurdles to achieving your dreams of an MBA – time and money.

Time
To complete an MBA program, you dedicate yourself to attending classes full-time, or nine to twelve semester hours, for two or three years. If you attend only part-time your program will take much longer. Naturally it would be ideal to attend classes full-time, but to do so, you will most likely have to take a leave of absence or resign your current position. This essentially eliminates your tuition funds.

Money
University tuition is going up. It’s moving faster than inflation and some quality MBA programs cost more than a standard bachelor’s degree. There are grant programs and student loans that can help bridge the gaps and some individuals are lucky enough to have their companies foot the bill. But to take advantage of that option, you must continue working while attending classes and sign a letter of commitment for a specific period of time in order to qualify for partial or full reimbursement. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has taken a very Web 2.0 approach to Halo. Not only is the popular game back for a third installment, it now records and can upload every game for instant replays and sharing. Heavily anticipated by the fans of the first two Halo games, this installment certainly did not disappoint. In fact, sales of the game topped $300 million in the first week.

Halo 3 Reviews
The reviews for the new game have been universally positive. Of course, it is a natural extension from the first and second Halo, but the basic first person shooting game hasn’t lost any of its bloody and action packed charm in this latest edition. The game was well hyped, and most feel that it lived up to its hype and then some.

The graphics in the first two were terrific, and the third installment on the XBox 360 gives the graphics another boost. The game is very heavy on the action, and as you move through the game you are submerged in heavily detailed environments and plotlines. Fortunately, these environments and storylines all are linear and make perfect sense. The story began in the first Halo, continued in the second and now finally has reached a conclusion in the third. Spin-offs are heavily anticipated, but nothing can replace the original action game. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, the first individual music sharing case to go to trial ended well for music companies. It didn’t go too well for the defendant however. Jammie Thomas is thirty years old and now owes music companies $222,000 for sharing music. That’s $9250 for each of the 24 songs highlighted in the case. It could have been much worse for Thomas. The companies alleged that she had shared 1,702 songs illegally.

By downloading songs and then sharing them through a Kazaa file sharing account, Thomas broke major copyright laws. For years these laws have been bent and broken by music lovers who didn’t understand the laws or frankly didn’t care. There are currently almost eight million households in the United States that have music sharing programs, despite the illegalities.

Throughout the trial, Thomas claimed that she doesn’t have a Kazaa account and that she had nothing to do with sharing music. She spoke to the press and made points about fighting back against bullying and felt confident that she would win out. Apparently she was wrong.

Her hard drive was never brought to court, but it might not have done much good. According to Thomas she had trouble with the drive and replaced it after the alleged sharing took place. According to record companies, she was sent an instant message alerting her to the copyright laws she was breaking. The hard drive was conveniently replaced the following month. Read the rest of this entry »

Examinations and tests have shown that on average, Wikipedia now rivals Britannica or other “real” encyclopedias in validity. Of course that is a very broad sample of topics, and modern day events and pop culture are not found in Britannica. This means we must rely on the collective common knowledge to give us the information we need to be amused or informed about the most current events in the world around us.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a large wiki – hence the name. It is a large system that collects the knowledge of a large population working under the theory that the collective knowledge of enough people will be correct. To help solidify information, it requires references and annotations of entries.

If I were to add an entry in Wikipedia, you can easily come in behind me and edit that entry. You can change it to whatever you want, but in reality you’ll probably just add a few things I left out or change some wording to make it more concise and valid. Over time, hundreds, or maybe thousands, of visitors and editors will make small changes until the Wikipedia entry reflects a common consensus. If everyone agrees the entry is correct, it most likely is. Read the rest of this entry »

There is growing concern among industry watchdogs that the traffic on various traffic monitors is not completely legitimate. These groups claim that the various ways of measuring traffic not only conflict with each other, but can be flat out wrong.

The high end measurements of traffic patterns and usage are taken the same way as television statistics – through samples. And those samples just aren’t doing a very good job. When you watch television, there are only so many things and channels you can watch. With the internet, the opportunities and activities online are endless.

Traffic monitors such as Netratings and comScore rely on their own versions of sample data to determine traffic patterns and rankings. The websites monitored, often high end sites, often notice that the supposed traffic coming to the site, which determines rankings, does not match their own server records. In many cases the numbers are very different. Read the rest of this entry »

Traffic is the lifeblood of the internet. A site can be beautiful and packed with desirable content, but without visitors, it languishes. For this reason, webmasters monitor their website traffic very carefully. The search patterns and uses of the internet have become more difficult to track, however, so traffic monitoring is beginning to take a different approach.

What is Traffic Monitoring?
The owners of websites want to know who is coming to their websites. Companies monitor the visitors to sites through various methods and pull information from the computers of their visitors. With the right tracking tools, a webmaster can see:

• How a visitor found his site
• How long the visitor stayed on the site
• What pages of the site he viewed
• How long he stayed on the website total
• Where his computer is located
• How many times he’s been to the site. Read the rest of this entry »

For years Internet Explorer dominated other web browsers. It was available on every computer and worked well enough to satisfy the majority of users. Then, independent browsers began to make waves. First Netscape appears and disappeared. Then, after a long uninterrupted stretch, a new browser began to gain market share – Mozilla’s Firefox.

Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer may be the standard, but it had some flaws. Without competition to make it necessary for continuous improvements, the browser became stale. The features didn’t improve much and bugs didn’t get fixed. Windows would freeze and nothing new was announced – until there was a good reason to do so.

Introducing Firefox
Firefox is nothing new really; it’s been around for years. Its popularity has been steadily increasing through this time until it’s not only popular with techie geeks, but with casual internet users. Until the latest release of Internet Explorer, Firefox had a few features that really made it stand out. Read the rest of this entry »