Ashley's blog

My teammate, Ashley, commented on an article from Global Neighbourhoods about some major TV conglomerates getting together to create "micro online television networks." Like my teammate, I think this would be a great idea. With TV on Demand and TiVo, its great to be able to watch TV when you want and this also holds true for tv shows on the internet. If this is what the online TV network would be like then it could definitely be successful.

Boston Ballet reflection

The final Wiki page I edited was for the Boston Ballet. When I started I was surprised to see that the info that existed on the page was taken directly from the Boston Ballet website and that was all. Later I came to realize that info on the company was hard to come by except in the form of reviews. Again, the site wasn't updated much by anybody other than me for the period of time we worked on it but maybe my edits will be changed later once someone else like me comes along. I found some more info on the website to add and a couple of news articles were also used but for the most part I didn't know what to add. That is probably why for the final edit I mainly just reformatted the site. It became pretty clear to me that this project was a challenge when it came to these sort of articles because I have in interest in many topics however not enough knowledge to change what is already out there.

AHS reflection

The page for Andover High School actually did receive some edits during my experience with it however it was probably by some unhappy student who wanted to bad mouth the school. The site also is pretty boring compared to many other school pages. It seems like it was made by a teacher who was doing some pr for the school but does little for providing insight into the student life which I tried to do. Since my additions are still there, they must have been well received or maybe nobody has seen them.

Taggart edits

The Taggart page was challenging in a different way because I started with no base or experience in Wikipedia. It was good to learn how to start a page and adding written content was really pretty easy. I had trouble with pictures though and I think they ultimately got removed for some sort of copyright issue even though I had taken the picture myself. Anyways I figure the experience of starting something myself was good. I don't know why anybody would really want to read the site so it also received no traffic except from the wikibots but oh well.

Fitzroy Island reflection

So the end of the year has come and it is now time to reflect on all of the wiki edits we made over the course of the semester. I think my edits for Fitzroy Island were the most interesting and difficult because the site was already pretty well developed. It was laid out well, had good info, and some pictures. I added more pictures to the site and some more information about the walking trails on the island. I thought that the site might get more traffic than it did because it was so well made however nobody has edited it except for me since the project started. I guess I had good edits or at least none that offended any members of the wiki community.

wiki edits

I finished up with my wiki edits today. I added information about student life to the AHS page which highlights a couple clubs and the sports.

I also changed the format of the Boston Ballet page. Instead of being just one section with lots of information I divided it into sections with headers.

personalized computers

We talked in class a few days ago about an article from CNN Money. The article itself was mainly about Digg.com but the thing that caught my eye was the name Nick Negroponte. A while ago my dad had mentioned him so I asked him what he knew about the guy and about the concept mentioned in the article, some sort of newspaper called Daily Me. Turns out Negroponte was my Dad's thesis adviser back at MIT and he had some knowledge of the Daily Me. It sounds kind of like the Amazon.com of the newspaper world in that you tell it what you're interested in or looking for and it will gather articles that are relevant to your interests and also suggests articles that it suspects you would be interested in. With sites like Digg.com, Amazon, and even Google's history program, the world wide web is becoming more personalized every day. My dad said that Negroponte was a big fan of personalizing computers (he gave me the example of a computer advising you to grab an umbrella as you left for work because rain was coming). Personalizing the net also seems like a good way to travel such a huge network with billions of different pages. The only downside I guess is that when it comes to trying to find something completely off the wall, it may be harder to search for unusual things when Google keeps kicking back things it expects you to be interested in and gives you a filtered result of the world. Kind of like living in the Emerald City where everything was green...

news article

So with the end of the year coming up and projects due left and right I've kind of been slacking in the blog department so for the next few days I'll be playing some catch up. Anyways I was reading on Slashdot today that Newscorp, the proud new owners of MySpace, is looking to invest in another internet company. According to the article, Photobucket and MySpace may soon be under the same owner which means that all of their disagreements in the past will have to be put behind them as their technology gets combined. Frankly I still cant believe the price tag that comes along with these popular websites. Photobucket is being quoted between 250 and 300 million dollars. The internet itself is a fairly new technology and this whole blogging trend with MySpace and Facebook selling for millions of dollars seems pretty crazy. Sure the stuff is popular now but will it last into the future or will it just be another trend that passes as the target market outgrows the concept?