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Finals... Already?

How is the Google Living Stories approach different than other news sources?
Google Living Stories varies greatly compared to other news sources. It gives you many options that are very convenient and organized as to what your personal needs and wants are. It gives you many things that a regular newspaper cannot give to you, like time lines, updated information on a certain subject, and video and audios. However, there are some cons to obtaining your news online... Some people like to relax and read the paper, or when your on break from work grab a paper and start reading. If news sources begin to boom in the online industry, I think that a lot more people will begin to update to data plans on their phones and rely on their cellular devices to stay updated.

Do you think this approach to stories will help to reduce bias in the news? Why or Why Not?
I think that in a lot of cases, there will always be bias in news. Whether you retrieve your information electronically or not, there will always be an author, and I think that more depends on the person writing the piece verses how you obtain it.


What features would you like to see added to Google's project?
I would like to see a search engine added to this Google project. It would then be easier to find a specific story. Through the Google Living Stories video, it sort of looked like there may have been a search engine, but I am not certain. And looking through the website on my own, I didn't see one. I just think it would be much more convenient for people if there was one, when looking for a particular story.

Black Friday

Each year many families participate in Black Friday events. But do you actually know what Black Friday means? Well... it originated from Philadelphia due to the heavy traffic on the day after Thanksgiving. However, some people prefer to sit in the comforts of their own home, and do their shopping online. The pros of that verses shopping in a store, would be the savings in mileage and gas on your car, shifting through traffic and crowds of people also doing their holiday shopping, and often times you can find more original things online, and sometimes people will sell things for cheap. Sites like Ebay and Craigslist sometimes also come in handy, if looking for good deals. The cons however, would be that often times you have to pay for shipping, which can be expensive sometimes. Also, sometimes shipping can be delayed... and if you need something by a deadline, it can be stressful. I often hesitate to buy clothes and shoes online as well, because sizes differ from store to store, and it is more of a hassle to ship it back verses taking it back to a nearby store.

This year, I would have to say that Walmart and BestBuy had some of the greatest deals.
Technology can be very expensive, and they both had deals!
Be sure to check them out :)

Walmart

BestBuy

The Little Rascals!

My boyfriend sent this to me one day, and I thought it was ridiculously cute! If you'd like to make a special someone's day... this is how to do it :)

Cloud Computing

Cube Tree: Cube Tree made it possible to comment on spreadsheets, slides on presentations, and other things used by people in the office. Therefore, communication is used greatly in this program.

DocVerse: Using this program, it is very easy to share documents, and for multiple people to edit a document, which is usually a tedious task. It's great because you can work with other people when online, but that is also a downfall, because when offline, syncing capabilities can get tricky when you try to reconnect.

Social Calc: Social Calc makes it easy for teams to make spreadsheets, and then make spreadsheets based off another teams's numbers and spreadsheets. They are available for everyone, and once one bit of data is updated, it is updated throughout the whole entire system, and everything that is based or linked from it.

Indicee: Indicee relates everyone's information and numbers and makes it easy for people to access it, even on the road!

Joyent: Joyent has been around for years before cloud computing even had a name, and has many different versions over the years as technology has changed. They have three main product areas: Joyent Public Cloud, Joyent Cloud Management, and Joyent Smart Platform. To take advantage of all they have to offer, you can purchase all three.

NetSuite: NetSuite makes access for everyone in a company very simple and easy, and therefore decisions and actions take less and save money. It controls information from Accounting/ERP, CRM, and Ecommerce.

Social Bookmarking

Well, what is social bookmarking you may ask?

Social bookmarking is a method of sharing, organizing, and managing bookmarks of websites. Unlike hitting the "bookmark" button on your browser toolbar, and having it only saved to your computer, social bookmarking is available through any computer that has internet. Anyone can use social bookmarking, because it is so easy and convenient. Certain professions find it very useful as well, like teachers. And not only teachers, even students. Because there are so many websites needed for classes, homework, and such, social bookmarking can be used to sort all of the sites, and then share them with other people who may also find them helpful. Today, so many people use the internet world and because of this, social bookmarking is becoming much more popular. Its great because its not just saved on one computer, but any that has internet access, which could also be a downfall.


A few social bookmarking websites:

• Delicious
  

• SubmitEdge

• Blurpoint

Out of these three, i have found that Delicious was my favorite! Number one, it was free... which is always a plus. Besides that, it was very well organized, I liked the layout of everything, and it was very clean.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween 2009!! From the 1920s....
:D