Final Blog Post: Internet

Internet is one of the most important things in our life, it has become an indispensable tool for us in almost everything we do, we need it at work, school, research, basically it is our encyclopedia to the world and it makes everything so easy and we can reach to almost anything we can imagine on the internet, things we couldnt read, search, watch before now can be found on the internet. Of course as everything else in this world internet has its goods and its bads for example, surfing on the internet for hours is for sure a bad thing. In this blog I want to talk about the good aspects and bad aspects of the internet.

I'm sure I would have a very long list if I mention everything that is good about the internet on this blog, so I will only mention a few things that I think are the most important and good aspects of the internet. In my opinion, the best thing about the internet is that it connects us to the entire world just by sitting on a computer, for example, before if we wanted to know about something specific about a different country we ahd to travel all the way there and research by ourselves but now with the internet we could just do the research while sitting at home. Another good aspect of the internet is that we can reach to our relatives, friends all over the world not just by emailing but actually being able to talk to them face to face with programs such as MSN messenger, Skype or Yahoo. Good aspects of the internet.

Internet saves so much time and can do so much good to us if we know how to use it wisely and responsibly, but when we start using it too much or abusing it, that is when the bad aspects of the internet begin. One of the worst aspects of the internet is its addiction. It is so easy to get addicted to the internet without even noticing that we are getting addicted specially when it comes to online games. This website shows internet addiction statistics in the past few years. We should be aware of getting addicted to the internet and take precautions so we won't get to the bad aspects of the internet.
There is one more bad aspect about the internet which is the hacking, hackers abuse the internet and try to make money by stealing credit card information, valuable company information and others. These hackers have to be stopped in order to have a safer internet service and in order to reduce the bad aspects of the internet. This website shows how to prevent hackers and gives a lot of good information about being safe from getting you information hacked.

We should be more careful when we use the internet so we can use it in its best and not get the to the bad aspects of the internet, we should be careful not to get addicted to it and we should not do bad things with it such as hacking.

Identity Theft

Identity theft is stealing someone else's information such as name, age, gender, address and using them to commit a crime or steal money or get hired with that  person's information. This has become a major way of theft because it is safe and the risks of getting caught are small. In America identity theft is becoming so common, and the rate is almost doubling every year. This is a serious issue because it causes so much problems to the victims, the people who got their identity stolen, because when the identity stealer commits a crime with another person's identity, that person will be in trouble. Famous and rich people are easy targets for identity thieves because they have money and it is easy to get to their personal information.
How to get all these information about the victims? The answer is easy: The internet is the easiest way to get information about people, specially the social networks, for example Facebook, people enter all their personal information without even knowing who sees them and how safe they are. People can steal our information from Facebook so easily and do fraud with it.

How should we protect ourselves from identity theft? We can never protect ourselves 100% but we can reduce the risks, we should not put all of our important personal information on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and we should be more careful when we are buying something online or whenever a website requires us to enter personal information, we should be sure that the website is trusted and safe to the our information first, and when we are sure, we should enter our information.

Final Exam Question:

Q:where was the first virus created?

A:Pakistan

Fan Fiction Picture

This ds106 assignment is called "Fan Fiction Picture" and we have to take a picture to describe our favourite song or movie or tv show. I chose the song Mr. Saxobeat and tried to take a picture that would give an image of "Mr.Saxobeat"

I know it's not a real saxophone but it was the closest this I could find at school.

Here is the song if you haven't heard it before.

 



Consumer Mashup

This ds106 assignment is called "Consumer Mashup" and we have to think of a place where we spend money the most and what we spend it on, since I live alone and I don't know how to cook, I go to McDonalds at least 3 times a week and I get Big Mac and a large size fries, so I took the simple McDonalds logo and added "Big Mac and Fries" on it. I edited the photo using a simple program on the internet, the program is called Picnik and it's easy to use.

I know it's not good to eat McDonalds that often and it makes you fat, but it's fast and tastes good not to mention that it's right next to my house.

Google Translate Fail

This ds106 assignment is called "Google Translate Fail" where we have to use the google translater and find the mistakes and make fun of it!

So I typed in 明日は晴れるかな (ashitaha hareru kana) which means "Is it going to be sunny tomorrow?" with a tone of wondering and a bit of worry by using the (kana). but instead, google translated it "Tomorrow Harerukana" which is very funny, I guess google thought Harerukana is a name or something!

I wonder why they made this translater if it is not going to work properly? Sometimes it just confuses people more than making translation easier. I think google should stop the translater or work to make it better.

My Spubble

This is the ds106 assignment called "Your Very Own Spubble". To make this assignment I used a simple website called Picnik which was suggested by the assignment creator, it was really easy to get used to the website and it has great features, I suggest you to give it a try and I hope this picture will make you laugh!

Eevolution of Life on Earth

This is my first ds106 assignment so I hope I'm doing it the right way. This assignment is about Evolution so I decided to show the evolution of life on earth.


                                                             Simple Cells

                                                            Simple Animals

 
                                                    More Complicated Animals

                                               

                                                                   Fish

                                                             Amphibians

                                                             Reptiles

 

                                                              Mammals

                                            Genus Homos and Evolution to Humans

  

                                                               Humans

                                                                 ??????

What is coming after us?? Is life on earth going to continue it's evolution as it has been all these years? Or are we humans the peak of evolution?

Malware and Social Networks

Malware is a short term for malicious software. Malware is basically a way of programming which enters to a computer and disturbs it by removing data, stealing information, and many more. Malwares have many ways to get into a computer, they can get in by a corrupted e-mail or a file or even by link on the internet. Recently, malwares have become so common specially in social networking websites such as facebook and twitter. What hackers do is they put malicious sites on facebook and send them to random people, and when the users click on the link, they send them to corrupted websites. On Facebook, there was this trick going on where a friend sends you a link and tells you to a link but actually it's not your friend who sent it, so when you click you will be sent to a link that looks exactly like the Facebook login page and when you enter you username and passowrd they would steal it with all your private information with it. There was another trick but instead of a link they send you a video and when you try to watch it, the computer will give you a message saying that you need to update the flash player and when you update it, it installs a virus that will turn you computer into a zombie. A zombie computer is a computer controlled be a hacker and the hacker can use your computer as he\she wishes to without you being aware of it, which is a very dangerous thing. Twitter has been having the same problems for a long time.

This is a video that shows the most dangerous computer viruses.



These social networks are working so hard in order to stay free of Malware, recently Facebook is co-operating with a security company called Websens to protect their website, so whenever a user clicks on a link, the link will be sent to the security website for a check and then will be sent back to the user before it opens. If the website is corrupted and has malwares in it, the security website will send an alert saying the website is corrupted and it will give a reason why they think so.

This feels like a war that will never end, a war between the hackers and the security companies, hackers always creating new viruses and companies trying to protect agains those viruses.

Best Digital Storytelling Ever!

Today I saw this awesome video one of my friends shared on facebook so I wanted to share it with the class, I don't know how the system really works but it is a kind of digital storytelling. It is amazing how that person developed the system, please take a look at the video and be amazed!



If you have any idea about how the system works, please feel free to leave a comment.
And here is the link where I found the video.

Being An Artist

"We Are All Artists" Or that's what Timmmmyboy said in his presentation. I listened to his presentation and he had a pretty interesting idea of art and being an artist. He has an idea that everybody is an artist and we can all be artists, he says we do not have to be good at painting or drawing to become an actual artists but we can practice to become better. He says that creativity is not inharited but it's just like sports where people have to practice to become better.
Timmmmyboy also mentioned that being in a creative environment can help a person to be better in art, for example a child who's parents are artists or writers, they grow up in that environment and naturally become artists as well, he thinks that ds106 could provide that environment for us.
He talks about how people tend to say they are not artists and they just cant draw or can't be creative and he encourages them not to act like that and be more positive and believe that everyone can be creative. Timmmmyboy believes that we can be more creative when we feel uncomfortable, he gives the example of Breakfast is Overrated and he says for example you can be more creative in the morning if you don't have breakfast or at midnight when your stomach is empty.

The part that got my interest the most was the "Take something ordinary and make it extraordinary" part, he gave the example of the coffee filters and how the producers came up with a way to make it easier to get out one coffee filter without ruining the box and getting more than one filter out, he also talked about using old videos and remix them to be more creative, and that's what made me think of the Surfin' Bird which we had a talk about in the class and we are doing it as a final project. What Family Guy producers did is they took an old song and recreated a seen and it actually worked, it became so famous that everybody started searching for the origin of that song.




Timmmmyboy has a point of view, but personally I do not enjoy being an artists, I would prefere to enjoy the art instead of being the artists. I have tried it a few times, I have taken drawing lessons, music lessons, pottery lessons but I never really enjoyed it. Maybe after all it's just not meant for some people to be artists.

Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling has become a major phenomenon in the world of internet. Storytelling is a form of art done on the internet, people use their imagination to create a story by using pictures, videos, music, and more. There are many kinds of digital storytelling, there is the video, design, writing digital storytelling and many more.
I will try to give an idea about the video and the design digital storytelling. The video digital storytelling basically uses videos to tell a story while the design digital storytelling depends more on graphical design and pictures to express the idea in a creative way.

Here is an example of video digital storytelling



And here is an example of a design digital storytelling



Here are some tips about how to manage a digital storytelling project. And here is a blog that is using digital storytelling as advertisement. And this is another blog that gives a bit more details about digital storytelling and its types.
We can see there are many people interested is this area recently, and I would suggest people to try and participate in such projects because they are interesting and there are no limitations as long as we have imagination.

Image 1: Digital Storytelling 2011 welcome screen by digistorytellin through CC licensing.

Image 2: the birds by Norma Desmond through CC licensing.

As We May Think by Vannevar Bush

After I red the article As We May Think which was written by Vannevar Bush in 1945 I realized how Bush had predicted many technologies that were invented later on after he thought of them such as personal computers, Internet, and the hypertext. Bush had thought of a machine which he called Memex , Memex is a  electromechanical machine to save a big amount of articles in one machine and organize them in a way that a person could retrieve several articles or pictures on one screen and have the ability to make comments on them which could be stored and recalled again if needed.

Here is a video to help understand better the concept of Memex and how it works

Many poeple were inspired by Bush and his ideas for the future such as Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson.

Douglas Engelbart is an early computer and internet pioneer he was inspired by Bush's article As We May Think and he had some heard about something about computer which was a recent  phenomenon at that time and he was a radar technician so he envisioned information being analyzed and displayed on a screen. He dedicated his life to computers. He was the person to make the first computer mouse.



Douglas Engelbart and Mouse Prototype

Here is an interesting website with some interesting videos about  Douglas Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute. The public presentation was  attended by about 1,000 computer professionals.


The article As We May Think made me think about how human beings have always been trying to explore, experiment, and always be creative in a way to make our lives easier and more convenient. They always tried to make the future better for the coming generations and they have succeeded and hopefully our generation will continue to be creative and make a change in our world.