04.11.08
Posted in Blogs, Mobile, Mobile Devices, News at 11:37 pm by Alice Pretchet
Was reading off a blog that America is launching a National alert text messaging system that alerts people in a certain areas or the entire country of severe weather, terrorists attacks or other major emergencies. And although I think this is a great step in the right direction, it does have me wondering wheather or not something more is coming with this next type of text messaging alert system such as, being located via GPS on the phone or being told you have a warrant and to come turn your self in, or other Governemt related things that can be done that might be considered BIG brother type activity.
Of course I am happy that such a system is in place to help alert the people of this great country of emergencies but I think it needs to be watched after carefully because I can see where this could be a serious problem with privacy issues. Was wondering what everyone else thought about this new alert system and future possibilities.
Permalink
03.22.08
Posted in Blogs at 8:55 am by Alice Pretchet
I have been tinkering around with my blog for the last couple of hours doing a pre-update check to ensure my Wordpress blog will be ready for a update when the new 2.5 is released sometime this week. I am hoping for a smooth transition from my old version to my new version. The last time I did an update a whole bunch of funny symbols showed up in the comments and posts and I had to go thru and manually remove all the symbols which took a couple of hours each day for about a week.
I have also added a couple more friends to my blog roll and hope that all my readers go over and check out what they are writing about in there blogs because they would not be there if they were not good, I promise.
Permalink
03.11.08
Posted in Blogs, Software at 3:39 pm by Alice Pretchet
This may be the best firefox plugin ever. Zotero lets you save web pages, or portions of pages and organizes them in a folder tree. You can put pages or notes into several categories, add notes to piecs of web info and more! This great plugin even auto detects information from several sources online and
can propagate important info for you. There is a way to run it from a usb flash drive, a portable firefox research tool, zotero.
I am now testing this handy web saver and comparing it with yoono - they both are plugins that help me save info from the web, and I am so glad these are available today!
Permalink
02.26.08
Posted in Blogs, Misc Tech at 7:38 am by Alice Pretchet
I encourage everyone to share their good and bad experiences when it comes to jobs, and life in general. A good friend saved me from continuing at one of my previous jobs when she explained to me in myspace blog post about what happened to her when she moved up in the company and ended up at the corporate office. At that point I knew I had no business striving to reach that level and it saved me a lot of time and effort. I was telling Sara about a site on the net that focus on sharing gossip and rumors, and another site that focused on whistleblowing about bad corporate activities, and she told me that there was some bad news about these sites recently. I told her how surprised I was that they have been under so much scrutiny given the free speech guarantees that we are supposed to have in this country.
Wikileaks recently had a court order to shut down, but i think the whistleblowing site will return and the court proceedings should pave the way for other sites like it to stay afloat without challenge. The college rumor site juicycampus.com has gotten some bad press, but my hope is that people will wake up and learn to take thins they read online, and hear in person for that matter, with a grain of salt. I know that there is a whole industry of forensic web people out there that scour the internet looking for information about companies online, trying to protect the reputation of businesses from being tarnished by people posting information on web sites. While I see the value of this type of work, I think sometimes these places go to far in their tactics for changing information that has been posted. I mean if someone finds a ranting blog post on a myspace about xyz company or person for that matter, surely adults can know in their mind that the post is only half the story, and it is one person’s view of events. I seriously doubt that someone will come across a random anonymous post and decide that they shouldn’t invest in something.
The power of technology and the internet should not be limited with frivolous cease and desist letters and law suits and malicious prosecutions, all limiting free speech. People should be adults and consider all angles and makeup their minds by the credibility and amount of posts. If you read something that is anonymous, you take it with a grain of salt. If you read something on CNN.com from Larry King, well, you take that for what that is. Heck a lot of people today don’t even believe what the mainstream media reports, why should eveyone be freaking out about what is posted on a no name site with no credible author?
Perhaps this will be the decade where people learn to toughen up their listening skills. Already you see a big movement on digg.com where people will demand references and sources before buying into any story. Now if we can just get the rest of the world to wake up, demand proof, take everything with a grain of salt, and stop listening to gossip so much. I do believe that listening to gossip encourages it. When someone is talking about someone to you, be sure that they will be talking about to someone else later, and probably in a similar scandalous tone.
So use technology to spread the word, use sources when you can. If you must write anonymously be sure not to include any details that will get you found out through a process of elimination. If you are going to hate on something keep it real, and realize that when other people are hating, often they are only telling part of the truth.
Permalink
Posted in Blogs, Fun at 7:22 am by Alice Pretchet
Sara just emailed me about a new site that is about to launch, where people will be encouraged to post their disgruntled rants about their jobs, employers or workplaces. I know there are plenty of people who post the corporate dirty laundry online when they have bad experiences, often through their personal myspace blogs, livejournals, and what have you. The idea of putting them all in one place with a site like Disgruntles.com is a good idea. Perhaps it will be easier to do a search about a prospective employer before taking a job somewhere. As it is now you can search around for blogs about different companies, but there is no standard for what to type in to a search engine. I’ve seen people type things like xyz company+negative+blog, but there is not standard tag or keyword that people would be typing, so the research can be tedious. With this new site I imagine it will much easier to find multiple posts about the bad companies out there.
Once again technology bringing power to the people, let’s use it wisely!
Permalink
« Previous entries