Social Media and Privacy

The recent discussion going on in class about social media has brought a few things to my attention.

1.) Everything is public - No matter how private you have set your account, the information can make itself public and there will always be a record of your post.

2.) Social media content can be detrimental to your career - Several people have been fired due to their facebook and twitter posts. Refer to 1.)

3.) Copyrighted material is under fire on social media sites - Viacom recently put up (and lost) a lawsuit against YouTube for copyright violations. While this currently is against the hosting site, its only a matter of time before they attack the uploading user. While I'm not saying people should break copyright laws, playing a 15 sec audio clip on a family video is far from using a song on a commercial.

Social media has opened up a whole can of worms, and its only gonna get worse. We are now constantly having to second guess what we say, where we say it, and where we record it to.

A topic several of us in class have been discussing is the use of smart phones or tablets, such as iPad, for school or other training purposes. While we would struggle to do this with our current Blackboard software at school, i can see this being used more and more in the future. Teachers already put up discussions, lessons, power points, and even e-office time for student use. I see this moving more and more into the smart phone/tablet realm as these devices are more able and powerful which each new model. My Android powered phone, for example, runs on a 1Ghz processor. This is the equivalent of many of the recent net books. The new iPhone 4 is also reported to run on that same speed processor and a new Droid device is expected to hit with a 2Ghz chip. This translates to the ability to do everything you used to on your PC now on your smart phone.
Another smart phone accessory that is becoming more common is the front facing video camera. While the first thing most people think is that this will be used for video conferencing at companies, i wonder to what extent that can be used for education? Video conferences on the go would allow students to chat "in person" with professors no matter where they were at the current time. And there have to be many more options that I'm aware of too.

E-learning and Youtube

While sitting in class talking about the videos we will be doing for our personal projects, i got thinking about e-learning and how video sites like You-Tube are impacting it. One site, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee_8IMx0uMo, for example, shows the average person how to screen print. Five years ago this technology wasn't available, and now, you find it whether you're on YouTube's search, or just Google-ing. Two sites, www.howtodothings.com and www.ehow.com, both show step-by-step guides, most with pictures, on how to do things on a variety of topics. While this is not a site to use on a corporate level, they can be a starting point to provide cheaper, more efficient training. I see a future where several companies, all running the same, or atleast a few of the same departments, creating online training to be accessed by those employees. Employee accounts could be set up so on login, only those sites they need to access are available. While we won't know if I'm right or wrong until the future, i forsee this as being the cheapest route available.

Blog Post 1

When looking at both hardware and software training, one notices from the start that while they are separate, they are both quite intertwined. Specialized hardware can be created for training purposes, but at a high cost to the company implementing the system. Training hardware also would have to be created for all locations to where training would take place. For example, if a company has campuses in both California and Florida, there would have to be twice as much hardware. To run on these training hardware systems, one would still have to create training software to run on them. It would be cheaper to create a software system to run on a custom hardware system as there would have to be less compatibility restraints. A cheaper method would be a just a software system. In particular, an e-software system. While compatibility would have to be checked on a few different options, such as browsers or operating systems. The overall cost would still be much lower than creating hardware also. Implementation would also be easier as off the shelf computers wouldn't need special installers. Once those are up and running, a website can be accessed and learning program started. With the current trend of open source gaining popularity, such as Linux and Google's Android, on closed source, such as Microsoft Windows platform and Apple's platform, e-learning is easier to implement than a pure hard drive installed software program. Several browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, are available across most operating systems, so software could be tested on the browser and the e-learning could occur on any platform running the free browser.

Currently, we're trending towards more online based training. This allows for around the clock training availability. Self-paced training also ties into this. Self-paced/on the job training is moving into a more common trend as e-training generally is self-paced. Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=703807) says that as of 2008, one billion personal computers have been shipped worldwide and that this number should double by 2014. Current cellphones are becoming more and more sophisticated so even those would probably be able to be used for training in the near future. Some colleges are already requiring smart phones or mobile "pads" for incoming freshman.