Social Media, Tech companies and Nepal

The Earthquake in Nepal

In recent news, Nepal has closed over 4,000 lives to a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. For those that survived this devastation are injured, orphaned, lost, or helping others any way they can. 

A few companies have helped Nepal with either ways for people to donate money or to provide services to find lost people.

Apple has used a one-click donation app with the Red Cross in other disasters, and it is available for the Nepal disaster as well. 

My favorite social media service that helps disasters is Facebook Safety Check. The concept is that Facebook detects is you are in the area of a disaster, and will send you a notification asking if you are all right. At the click of a button Facebook notifies your friends that you are safe. While this app is very creative, it may not help a poor country like Nepal. Most citizens do not use Facebook.

Like Facebook, Google offers Person finder.

Microsoft offers free Skype calls for Nepal Earthquake victims. 

AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile all offer free text and calls in and out of Nepal.

I am so grateful that their are companies out there that are trying to lend a helping hand. More companies like PepsiCo and The Coca Cola Company are sending food and water for the survivors of the Earthquake in Nepal. The United States has donated 10 million dollars in response to the devastation. Other countries that have also donated money or efforts include: United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, Norway, Germany, and Singapore. When push comes to shove, we (the world) can come together to help those who desperately need help. 

To find out ways that you could help click on this link --> Pray for Nepal

Sources: NPR; CNN

A little pick me up:

Happy Hump Day.

Blog Prompt #3

Google

 Does Google have too much power over our lives?

Have you seen those commercials with that cute little girl asking her phone if dog's dream? She was asking Google. Google seems to have all the answers. 

There was a time when people had a spiritual connection to find answers. People would turn to God, their priests, pastors, and other members of their congregation for answers about their lives. There were witch doctors and regular doctors to ask questions about their health. There were lawyers, judges, and Liberians to answer logical questions. Now that we have a .000002 second search engine, we don't need other people to help us answer our questions. We don't need that personal connection with other people to satisfy our curiosity.

To be honest, I am one of those people. I use Google for everything. I will ask stupid questions daily for Google to pop up links to websites that may have the answers. 
Here are a few things I may Google daily: 

• Weather for the day
• Lyrics to a song I don't know the name/artist
• To go to my school's website
• The address to a place I want to get to

People use this tool throughout their day. Instead of typing the "www." and the ".com" we just take the extra time to Google the website we want to see.

Are we addicted to Google?

Above proves that I am addicted. The four examples above are some things I would ask on a typical day. There are days where I search a million things because I am either too tired to think, too tired to read a book for the answer, too tired to contact a professional for their opinion, and too tired to ask a friend or a relative's opinion or answer. 

Google can be addicting but on the other hand, people who use the Apple's Siri or the Android equivalent are even lazier.  They won't even take the time to type in a question or search phrase. They just click a button, ask the question, and Siri will either answer the question with her voice or pop up a few websites that can help to find the answer.

Does the Googlization of our lives  endanger our privacy or our independence in important ways (as some critics suggest)? 

It can take away our privacy, but what do we have to hide? If we are planning to endanger others, then yes we should not have any privacy with Google. I feel like Google has the right to penalize anyone with strange activity on their Google account, or tracking where the computer is located.  


Happy Fry-Day

Blog Prompt #2

Convergence

What exactly is convergence?

A situation in which multiple media systems coexist and where media content flows fluidly across technology.

It's funny. I watched an episode of The Office last night that displayed the exact definition of the convergence. If you have never seen the office thats okay. The episode was about a member of the office who created this new way of communicating. Well, it isn't exactly new but the concept is entirely different from traditional way of contacting someone to discuss something. He created WUPHF. I wasn't exactly sure what the acronym stood for, but the concept was that a person sends a WUPHF to another person and the message will sent to the other person's phone, computer, fax machine, on various applications like email, text, instant message, and in one case the person received a a voice message.

Empowering

In The Office case the use of convergence was at its extreme. But today the way we use our technology is very empowering to the consumers of convergence because of we have the capability to communicate in many ways. I have a macbook pro. On this computer, I can send a text from my phone account to anyone who has an iPhone. I could FaceTime anyone with an apple device, and I can do all of that while I write a paper or listen to a lecture in class. I think that our technology has advance a lot in the ways to communicate. I could be sitting at the boiler house on the NCC campus while I send a text to my friend in Chicago. I could easily pick up my iPhone and FaceTime with my sister who lives in Florida. It's amazing that these kind of communications were not around for my parents, and it will be more advanced for my children.


"Happy Winds-day"
-Winnie the Pooh

Blog prompt #1

Blog Prompt #1

For this blog post I had to read a interview conducted by Rebecca Blood and write my response.

The interview I chose to read was about a blogger named Trine-Marie Kristensen. The interview was conducted in 2007 and by that time she was a blogger for only three years. One thing I found interesting about Kristensen that really intrigued myself to continue blogging is that she receives money for blogging. Not just from her 700-1000 word daily posts but she participated in media coverage and interviews as a result of her blog.

Another thing that I liked about Kristensen was her field of discipline. She did not go to school for writing. In fact, she went to school for the same major as myself: marketing. This helps me understand that I could continue to blog, and maybe go beyond blogging, without had be strictly trained in writing or English. On the other hand, North Central College is a liberal arts school and I give a lot of props to their level of assignments in writing.

The name of her blog is Hovedetpaabloggen. It is German for "Head on the Block" meaning "to dare". I like the concept of her title because I feel like most titles out there are generic or boring but this adds in the word blog into another language. I thought it was remarkable.

Kristensen writes whatever comes to mind. But she keeps at the hobby to connect with other people with similar topics. She thinks it is fascinating to connect with people from various parts of the globe and connect on one thing. I feel like that is awesome because as time moves on, international connections are getting stronger and more valuable. I feel like blogging helps people understand other cultures which will lead to optimism with cultures and ethnic groups.

What I learned from Trine-Marie Kristensen is that anyone can blog about whatever they want. It is how they use their blog to connect and become personable with fellow bloggers from other countries. These connections may be a gateway to further impact maybe a few readers, communities, or maybe even a whole country.

Happy Friday!

My First Post

April fools

What I did on this comedic holiday

On this day, I always end up with a plan, but I would never fall through with the planning. On Wednesday, I had a plan to do something simple. Something that would not take a lot of brain power.

A lot of pranks can be found on YouTube. There are hundreds and thousands of subscribers who strictly prank and joke with friends. Plastic wrap, hot peppers, and the simple scare are the most popular pranks you will see on YouTube. Here are a few links:

Saran Wrap Prank
Hot pepper extract
Original Scarecrow Prank

Pranks are so funny. Is it because we love to watch other people get humiliated and ridiculed? Definitely. We like to be the pranker, but when it's our turn to be the prankee, it's the end of the world. The next time you are being pranked make sure that you aren't  a sore loser. It makes the pranker feel as if they accomplished their prank if it ends in tears, anger, or retaliation. But if it ends in relationship severing, then the prankee overreacted. Well, unless the prank was life-threatening.

Do you remember your senior year of High School? Remember this is another time a prank is deemed "okay" to do? I've heard many pranks to do for a senior prank, but I only have one favorite. The one my senior class did was not my favorite because all we did was block off the parking lot from the underclass students and have a barbecue. But my old time favorite includes farm animals. You've heard of the three pigs numbers 1,2, and 4? It's a classic. The cow is another animal prank that is hilarious. Rumor has it  that cows can walk up the up the stairs but not down. Have you ever seen a a school rent construction machinery to remove a wall and release a cow? 

Here's a link for a few more ideas for senior pranks

So here's the deal. I planned nothing this year for my April fools prank. I went the easy route. I went out and bought a pack of googley eyes. It was like a pack of 6 pairs for 88 cents. I should have bought more, and I should have bought the smaller eyes. I glued eyes on random items in the fridge (I live with my boyfriend and his parents). I only had enough for six items: the milk, mustard, two yogurts, chicken stock container, and a container of juice. It seemed to have worked. I posted the picture on my facebook page with the caption:

"To those who go to the fridge just to stare..."

In the end, my prank was funny but not something epic. It was quite popular on facebook but not a hit with my in-laws. 

Thanks for reading and from the words of the famous Ron Burgundy:

"Stay classy San Diego"