The End

Well this is my last post, and also the last thing I have to do this semester. It is only Friday the 18th, so I lucked out a bit. I had a tough week, with 4 exams and a research paper. But I finished, and hopefully the grades will be pretty good. I learned a lot this semester in BUAD 477, I am pretty computer illiterate when it comes to making web sites, blogging, and that sort of thing, but it really was easy. And when I got into making these blogs and the wikipedia edits I had some fun. It is cool to know that something I write could potentially be seen by everyone on the web. Thanks for the good semester Professor Brown, good luck to you in your retirement from teaching.

3rd Wikipedia Edit: Kenmont Swim and Tennis Club

For my last wikipedia edit of the semester, I added lots of information about the swim team at Kenmont. This was always my favorite part of the summer, competing in these meets. I thought it would be helpful for anyone viewing to have a little more information, and hopefully get them interested in swimming! It is a great exercise, more people should try it out.

3rd Wikipedia Edit: Glen Haven Elementary School

In this, my 3rd and final edit of Glen Haven Elementary School, I added two fairly lengthy sections. The first was about the Parents-Teachers Assocation, (PTA) because I feel this is an important group which keeps the community of parents involved and up to date with what is happening the school. The second addition was about the special events that are held each year at Glen Haven, from Back to School Night, Math Night, The science fair, and many more. These are fun ways for students to extend their learning experience.

3rd Wikipedia Edit: Sligo Middle School

For my third and final edit of the Sligo Middle School Wikipedia page I added a few more sections. First I wrote a more appropriate opening headline text for the page, which included the school motto. Then I added many of the programs in place for students that involve them and help them to become more well rounded. I also made a section for the school website and described some of the important information they can find on it. I of course provided the link so that it would be easy to find. I think that this wikipedia page is now a very comprehensive page about the most important features of the school.

Slashdot: Treadmill Workstation

There are too many weightloss programs out there to even begin to be able to count. It is one of the biggest fads that Americans take part in today. A very interesting solution I read about on slashdot. It descbries a treadmill that is attached to a desk so that you can check emails, voicemails, and these sorts of things while working out. I think that is kind of a ridiculous idea, as it would be very difficult to multitask these two things. However, there was a more plausible idea that sounded pretty cool where you ran on a treadmill to move your character through an rpg games, and used the buttons on the front of the console to fire weapons. That is a very cool integration of working out and having fun.

3rd Wikipedia Edit: Aqua Hoya Swim Club

In this edit, I added information about the philosophy of the swim club. This will give readers a better idea of what goals they are trying to accomplish. Also, I made a seperate category for the training facility, to highlight that it has just been renovated. You can view this final edit at this website.

In addition, I had said that the swim club were members of Potomac Valley Swimming. However, when I clicked on the link, no one had made a wikipedia entry about PVS. So I decided to take the initiative and write a little bit about PVS. I felt that this was an important addition to the page so that readers would better understand competitive swimming in the area. To view this wikipedia page that I started, click here.

2nd Wikipedia Edit: Kenmont

In this edit of the Kenmont Swim and Tennis Club wikipedia page, I added all of the special events which will be taking place over the course of the summer. Also, I added a section saying who holds distinctive positions on the board. I also referenced the kenmont swim and tennis club webpage to help verify this information. You can check the progress of this wikipedia page .

Slashdot: Walmart

I had not read many of the blogs on slashdot for quite some time. I have come to realize that slashdot is my favorite of the required blogs. This is mostly because the blogs are concise and to the point, and that it is updated most frequently. An article that caught my eye this time was about the super retailer Wal-Mart . It said that Wal-Mart is making a huge push for HD DVD players(Blue-Ray). Up until now I had been skeptical if these players would catch on, especially since DVD's are still considered a somewhat new innovation. However, once Wal-Mart makes a decision like this, it pretty much puts it in stone that all other retailers are going to have to adapt and buy these players as well. It really is amazing how much power and control over the market Wal-Mart has. That said, I still refuse to shop there on principle.

HTML

In class today (5/9/07) we discussed the basics of HTML. In a class my sophmore year we had to create a basic web page so I had learned some of the same basic commands. It was nice to have a refresher though, since I had forgotten how to do most of them. I have heard from a few different sources that it is very advantageous for a person to have their own website, especially when entering the job search. Some companies look to see on your resume if you have a website listed, so that they know you are technologically adept and realize current trends.

2nd Wikipedia Edit: Glen Haven Elementary School

In this edit I added some important general information, created headings for the office staff, student activites, and highlighted the diversity of the school. This should make a more complete representation of the school. You can view the edit here

Sligo Middle School 2nd edit

Today I added two new sections to the sligo middle school wikipedia entry. I added the administrative staff and the after school programs. This should give readers a better idea about what the school offers. You can view the changes here.

Aqua Hoya Swim Club 2nd edit

Today I edited my the page I created entitled Aqua Hoya Swim Club. I added a brief defition of all seven of the swim groups that they offer and what each one focuses on. I also added four referring links where I found my information. You can see my work here.

Inside Adwords Mothers Day Article

While browsing Adwords these morning, I noticed an article regarding Mother's Day. It says the average amount an American spends on this holiday is $140. That seems to me like an extremely high amount. If we spend this much just on Mother's Day, I'd be interested to know how much the average American spends on even more of a consumer holiday, such as Christmas. The article also made me feel a little bad, since I will only be spending a small fraction of that amount this year. But hey, I am a poor college students, how much can my mom expect? The rest of the article was explaining to advertisers how to capture part of this last minute market.

Forbes: Mixed Media

Yesterday in class (5/7/07) professor Brown handed out an article written by Forbes called "mixed media" which addressed the issue of the changing media landscape. No longer are people forced to read news from a certain paper, they now have the ability to find information on whatever niche they are intersted in. Although I am not a big consumer of news myself, my dad is a great example of someone who has completely changed the way he recieves news. He cancelled his subscription to The Washington Post and now reads from a number of websites, including many personal blogs. News Media organizations really have a challenge on their hands to keep up with the changing times, but the ones who are successful also have some good money to be made I would imagine.

Wikipedia Edit: Kenmont

Kenmont Swim and Tennis Club is where I have spent my summers from the time I was ten until I was 18. I have many fond memories of the pool, and still go and visit often when I am home during the summer time. I thought this would be a great topic to make a wikipedia website about. you can see my entry here.

Wikipedia Edit: Glen Haven Elementary School

Glen Haven Elementary School is where I attended elementary school and is located very close to my house. I was dissapointed to see that it did not have a wikipedia entry, so I took the liberty of creating one. You can see what I wrote here

Stiuqxela

I just thought I'd mention stiuqxela again during my random musings. The EUFA league champion semifinals were on this week, and they were very entertaining to watch. I had not been into soccer until the world cup this past year, but it is really growing on me. I still don't like it as much as the NFL or NBA though. Speaking of the NBA, the first round of the playoffs are taking place this week also. I hope that the Golden State Warriors pull it out over the Dallas Mavericks. Dirk is an overated player so I hope he loses. I personally am a fan of the Wizards, but once Arenas and Butler went down, I knew their season was over.

Wikipedia Edit: Sligo Middle School

Sligo Middle School (SMS) is where I attended middle school quite a while ago. It has a very scant wikipedia entry, so I am aiming to improve it bit by bit. In this edit I noted the school hours, the school mascot, and some of the schools core values. You can check out my edit here.

Longevity Gene

While browsing slashdot this afternoon, I came cross an article that described a gene found in worms that increases life longevity up to 50%. They say there is a very similiar genes in humans, which may somebday be able to be activiated by doctors. I take this news with mixed feelings. One the one hand, it would be great to be able to live a longer, healthier, more prosperous life. But on the other hand, the length of human lives is increasing dramatically already, so much so that the economy is having trouble supporting the elderly, who no longer can contribute to the well being of a nation.

Katie's Amazon Post

I agree with Katie that this is an interesting issue, regarding Amazon.com offering different prices to different customers. This sort of price discrimination may help the website, but I was lead to believe that this is not only unethical, but in some cases illegal. Since the original complain was made, I have heard that Amazon is no longer participating in this price discrimination, and I hope that is true. You can read Katies post by going here.

Digg

I thought the discussion about Digg.com today in class was very interesting. Their website is really quite revolutionary and will hopefully continue to develop as they hope it will. However, the part I found the most interesting was about the possible copyright infringement issue that they are involved in. I thought that this was very similiar to the Viacom vs. Google lawsuit. With both these large sites running into potential legal problems, it is obvious that new laws must be written or old laws clarified to establish what these sites can and cannot do. Right now the governing bodies are lagging in solving these issues and I think they should start to take an active stance in doing so.

Wikipedia Edit

Today I created a Wikipedia page for my high school swim club, Aqua Hoya Swim Club. Prior to my creation there was no such page for this club, so hopefully this will help them to get some recognition and expand their base. You can check out my edit here.

Deal Catcher

During the last class we had a presentation by the guys who started the website Dealcather.com. I thought it was a very interesting presentation, as it showed a lot of the things we discuss in class in a real life situation. The idea for the web site was simple yet effective. It is amazing that they are in the top 5 of over 100 bargain sites. Just as impressive was them surviving the dot com bust that happened just after their site took off. Their presentation was overall a great learning experience. Thanks for inviting them Professor Brown.

Packers

Stiuqxela is awesome. And so are the Green Bay Packers. Not as much as Wu Tang, because they are forever.

Matt Kates' End of Poverty Post

Matt's post discussed a book about the poverty situation in much of Africa and other less developed countries of the world. I read a book about that same subject entitled "The White Man's Burden." Altough both book talked about similiar subjects, the author in The White Man's Burden, William Easterly came to almost the exact opposite conclusion as Jeffrey Sach. In fact, he said the only way we have currently tried to aid Africa is through top down approaches, and we (the western world) have spent over 2 trillion dollars, yet the economic situation has not improved. He was much more in favor of bottom up approaches. Although these approaches do not promise to end world hunger or poverty, they are much more effective. People actually go into towns or villages to determine what it is the village best needs, instead of applying broad measures that most likely will not mesh with their culture and economic situation. As you can see, I am more in agreement with Easterly. To get more of an idea of what Sach's thesis was, check out Matt Kates' post.

Hardware Implants

I was reading some of the articles on Slashdot, and although many are interesting, I found one to be particularly amazing. The blog talks about implanting a computer chip to act as a neuron. The article then makes some impressive claims that if this chip works as described, it "could remedy everything from Alzheimer's to absent-mindedness — and reduce memory loss to nothing more than a computer glitch." That would be simply amazing, but I would like to see some more information on the subject before jumping to any conclusions. Check it out here.

Katie's Post Before Spring Break

In her post, Katie discussed how technology has advanced the hiring and recruiting process of employers. She addressed a topic I had not heard of, which is posting job openings on SearchBlog. I think this is just another advancement in how the internet has made the hiring process easier for both employers and employees. A person who is looking for a job now has access to thousands more opportunities than they have in the past, and this allows employers to get a more qualified applicant pool. The process is also cheaper and faster online. While there are a few downfalls, such as people applying to jobs they know they are not qualified for simply because it is so easy, I think the benefits far outweight any of the problems. For more information, check out her post.

Michael Phelps

I am not sure how many people know, but this past week Michael Phelps competed at the FINA World Championships held in Australia. During the course of the meet he won 7 gold medals and set 5 world records. I am here to make the argument that his performance during the past week was the greatest individual sporting performance in history of not only swimming, but all sports. In a sport where 1,2, or 3 tenths of a second seperate the winners from the losers, Phelps domolished the competition, and his own world records by as many as 4 seconds a race. This type of domination is unheard of in this sport. This article argues both sides of the question, whether he is the greatest athlete of all time or not. At this point the concensus is that he is far from it, but I to differ. Any true sports fan should at least take a look.

Products Enhanced by the Web

I thought that the example given in class of a product improved by the web was a great one. The news industry is having to be completely overhauled and are forced to think of new ways to get the news out to the public. People can now have up-to-the-second news on any issue they want to hear about. This is definately an improvement over the stagnant, twice a day news most people are used to. It is unfouranate that many of the prominent newspapers throughout the country are struggling to sell their paper editions, but I am sure they will have some creative answers to replace that revenue. I am confident of this because news will always be in high demand from the general public, so they will be willing to conitnue to pay what they were paying for paper editions in other ways.

Internet Curfew!?

While looking at the new topics on slashdot I came across an article titled "Internet Curfew for College Students." While the article is written about top Indian engineering schools, and not Americans, it still strikes me as absurd. The article states that the school cuts off all internet acccess at night to the dorms. The Dean of Student Affairs says its because the hardrives of students are filled with bad content. I think this is not only crazy but also a detriment to the school. College students live a very different lifestyle than the average person, and in this lifestyle they often do work very late at night. I think this will dramatically reduce the productivity of the students, not to mention a possible uproar it would cause. I guess I am writing this all from an American perspective, where I would hope this type of policy would never be able to go into effect. Maybe in India this is not such a violation of human rights and is much more accetptable to the citizens. Personally, I still think its a bad idea and I would be outraged if a similiar program ever took place in the U.S.

Listening to Customers

Throughout college, marketing classes have taught us that building a good relationship and meeting customer demands is an important part of being a successful business. While this seems apparent, the reality is many companies are not doing this at all, and are continuing to abide by the sell what you make framework instead of vice versa. In this interesting blog Dell tried to do just that by allowing customers to voice their opinions and then take initiative to try and please them. While the customers has some good suggestions, Dell determined that many were not feasible. This ended up backfiring on Dell somewhat because people did not believe Dell's response. This shows how difficult and careful a company must be with achieving these goals, because obviously even sometimes with the right intentions it can end up hurting you.

Google Buys Again

While looking at some of the headlines on ClickZ I saw that Google, Inc. was once again in the news. It should come as no surprise that they have made another acquisition, this time of Adscape Media. The article does not outline the terms of the deal, as they have yet to be disclosed. However, what it means for the company is that they will be able to expand their advertising to in-game mediums. This is just another way that google has expanded into seemingly every online landscape over the past few years. While it is not surprising to me, it is still extraordinary.

Katie's Fraud Post

My teamate Katie posted about the occurence of phishing on the internet. Like her, I have found this to be a very common practice. I recieved upwards of 15 junk emails a day, and often they include some type of phishing in them. For the most part I have found that they are relatively poorly done, but there is an occasional well done scam that almost catches me offguard. Luckily I have yet to be a victim of one of these phishing scams and hopefully I never will be. Her post can be found here.

Vanity Search

While reviewing for the exam one of the notes suggested doing a vanity search by typing your own name into googles and see what comes up. I thought this was an interesting idea and went ahead and did just that. My Results were somewhat interesting. Eight of the first nine responses were actually about me, and this very blog was the 8th response. Most of the rest were about different swimming events in my career; from my summer league to high school to college. It was good to see that nothing bad showed up!

Global Neighbourhoods Article

I was reading the updates on the required subscriptions and ran across an article I found rather interesting. The arcticle was about the popularity of Facebook I was surprised to learn that it was read eight times more than the New York Times, and 18.5 Million users is really amazing. While this news is interesting, I also find it somewhat concerning. The daily news should be much higher on our priority list than a website such as Facebook. However, these statistics do speak to the growing amount of people who use social media such as these sites online. And the author is right, professionals in any sort of marketing or PR field would be doing their companies a disservice if they do not pay attention to these stats.

Legal Problems

In class we discussed the problems that the internet has created in dealing with some illegal behavior. Because I have played online poker in the past, I have first-hand experience with this matter. Prior to the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in September 2006, I did not realize that online gambling was illegal. So this brings up the difficulties of not only creating and enforcing laws, but also must deal with uncharted terroties that increase confusion. Even after the passing of this act, many American players can gamble online without any reprocusions. I would be willing to wager (excuse the pun) that many online gamblers still do not realize what they are doing is considered illegal. Just my 2 cents.

Back to School

As I mentioned in my first post, I sustained an injury during the swim season. It turns out the injury was a sports hernia. This condition is a misnomer, as it is not a hernia at all. Instead, it is when the muscles connected to your pelvic bone fray and tear. To fix this injury I underwent surgery on February 14th. I was recovering for over a week at my grandparents house, but now I am back at the University of Delaware. Because I missed so much class, I am way behind on my work. Time to get to it.

First Blog

This is Roger Carman, a Junior at the University of Delaware. I am a member of the varsity swim team, and even though I am injured and will not be able to compete, the team is in their conference meet starting this Wednesday. You can follow their performance here. Go Hens!