So many missed opportunities

News recently emerged that Google tried to purchase the company Groupon for an estimated 6 billion dollars. Groupon is a site that offers special deals for local restaraunts and businesses to consumers that sign up to their email list. For a company that is only 2 years old 6 billion dollars is a huge offer. They however declined under speculation that they would soon be working towards an IPO. While I am impressed by Groupon's success, it has made me look back and analyze some of the opportunities I've missed out on. About a year and a half ago I was working for my cousin's publishing company in Chicago. He asked me to design a website for a company that would have essentially been a competitor to Groupon. He had a little bit different business model that would have likely allowed him to achieve some pretty good success. If he could have even achieved half the success Groupon achieved, that could have meant billions. I began creating a mock-up for the site, only to find my cousin's interested dwindled. I was just enjoying being in Chicago and had plenty of other work to keep me busy, so I pretty much dropped the idea. Now in retrospect, I wish I would have pushed it on him more. He has lots of resources, and it would have taken very little for him to launch the start-up. I have had similar start-up opportunities in the past that I've always given up on for one reason or another. Seeing all these missed opportunities is really beginning to motivate me to do more with my ideas. Now if only I could meet some angel investors.

arrrgh there's a lot of pirates still out there

When I first became interested in computers, one of the first things I did was begin downloading music through Napster. From there as I began to dig deeper into the inner workings of computers, I began to download pirated software. For those that don't know the modern use of the word pirating refers to the use of any media or technology without paying for the rights to it. For a long time I would stay up every night finding countless movies, music, and software to download. Sometimes I would never even use the media I downloaded, I would simply download it for the fun of it. I would amass all this media and software onto hard drives just so I would have it "in case I ever wanted to use it." I would use my family's computers like zombies in order to take advantage of their bandwidth when it wasn't being used. I was downloading gigabytes upon gigabytes of data every week. While some of the data was never touched, I did use a lot of it, and through it I learned a great deal about computers. Eventually anti-piracy laws were passed. I began to read stories of people being sued for millions of dollars just for downloading a few songs without paying for them. This eventually began to scare me. One day I began using Apple's Itunes software for my music and movies. I loved the ease of use and the convergence Apple had achieved across devices. From there on out, I began buying all my music through Itunes. I also began buying and renting the majority of my movies through Itunes. As I started college and began working more with enterprise computing environments, I lost touch with the pirating community. To the point that most of my accounts on torrent websites are now inactive. While I knew pirating was still very popular in some areas, I had somewhat assumed that it had declined in recent years. A recent article on Slashdot showed me I was very wrong. Antivirus company Avast recently revealed that a single license of it's software is being used by 774,651 users worldwide in over 200 countries after going viral on file-sharing sites. This shows how very popular pirating still is.

Who needs books anymore?

With the launch of the Google bookstore, it appears as if we are truly headed towards the end of the traditional book. One of the most popular Christmas items this year is the e-reader. There are several that have become extremely popular including the Sony Nook, Amazon Kindle, and Apple Ipad. While some devices such as the Ipad offer much more than just your simple E-reader experience, the Nook and Kindle are currently aiming to be just another way to read a book, magazine, or newspaper. To begin with I thought all this new technology was very exciting and interesting. I went out and bought an Ipad shortly after their release. I spent the next several weeks coveting the shiny new device and playing with it often. Then it all came to an abrupt end, and less than two months after buying it, I sold the device to someone at church. I was hoping the whole digital publication thing would just be a fad, but the more I see the more I realize, it is the future. Now that Google has entered the competition, it is officially the next big thing. Looking back now I can see one of the original starting places may have been one of the least expected, the education environment. Two years ago I began having classes offer e-versions of the textbooks. Now nearly half my classes offer the option to purchase the e-books instead of the more expensive traditional texts. While for classes that require little use of the text and casual reading of the news may be convenient on a tablet or e-reader, I find it very difficult to really dig into something more serious without the printed version. For instance when configuring our most reason DDN (Data Direct Networks) storage device, I had to print and read the entire 300 page manual. I just couldn't focus when trying to read through the PDF on my PC. While it's obvious e-editions aren't going away, I think there will always be a certain place for printed media.

Is netflix killing the internet?

As more and more people and devices have begun taking advantage of Neflix's streaming media capabilities, a very important problem has arisen. Who will pay for the bandwidth. Streaming terabytes and terabytes of media constantly, requires quite a bit of bandwidth. Recently a company called Level 3 which is a streaming-content provider signed a contract to become the exclusive provider for Netflix's online content. Shortly after this contract was signed, Comcast (the largest cable internet provider in the nation) demanded that Level 3 pay more money for the use of their network. While normally I wouldn't care that much that two corporate tech giants are arguing over money, this is somewhat concerning to me. The issue is that someone is going to have to pay for the bandwidth, and I don't want it to be me. I use Netflix regularly, and at the end of the day, it's very likely that consumers will be the ones to pay. Where this turns into an internet wide issue, is if Level 3 doesn't pay Comcast, Comcast is threatening to block Netflix content to its users. If this were to go through, it could possibly mark the end of the "free internet" as we know it.

Star Wars in real life?

We may finally get to see some of the amazing technology seen in the Star Wars movies. While I'm not a Star Wars junkie (like Jason), this is some pretty interesting technology. Apparently Japan has put in a bid for the 2022 World Cup that's based off providing holographic video feeds to stadiums in other countries. The way it would work (as I understand it) is the Japanese would use over 200 high-definition cameras to film every match. The cameras would allow for complete coverage of the entire field, including every angle of every player. The camera feeds would then be fused together using technology that doesn't yet exist, to create holographic images of each player that would then be cast onto fields in other countries. This would allow people in the US to go to a stadium and watch a holographic version of a match that is taking place in Japan. This technology sounds really cool, and I would definitely like to see it in action. Unfortunately, the technology doesn't yet exist. I'm not sure I could agree with FIFA if they gave the World Cup to Japan based solely off their promise of a nonexistent technology.

Wikileaks

The Wikileaks fiasco has become one of the most popular stories in the world lately. Over the last month, the site Wikileaks.org has been publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents. This is the largest set of confidential government documents ever to be released to the public. Perhaps one of the biggest issues I have with this is the fact that reports are indicating that people, in particularly soldiers, are dying due to the leaked information. That makes this an issue that must be addressed. I think the issue isn't the leaked information itself, but the policies that have been put in place that allow people to have this confidential information. Information of this level of secrecy should be shared between as few people as possible. In the event that someone in this inner circle is fired or gets pissed off for some reason or another, they should probably be monitored, to make sure something like this doesn't happen. In my opinion, this is the government's fault. One person who is not to blame is Julian Assange. Assange is the founder of Wikileaks. He is being sought for rape and assault charges which he may or may not be guilty of. Many people in the media believe that the charges are fraudulent and are just being targeted at Assange because of his involvement with Wikileaks.

college - a place for lazy people

This has proven to be an enlightening semester. I've had several technology related classes in which I was far more knowledgeable than the rest of the class. Throughout these classes I had multiple people come ask me to help them with projects, homework, and other assignments. While I don't usually mind helping people, it became increasingly annoying as I realized most of these people are just lazy. It's not that everyone in my classes is too stupid to learn how to work with technology, it's that they haven't ever had to actually sit down and learn how to use a new technology. I think if we could find a way to force students to learn that real IT implementation consists of actually having to sit down and figure out how to use something you've probably never used or seen before, we might make great strides towards becoming a top 20 University. Friends I have who've graduated that seem to have this same problem are finding it very difficult to get jobs or promotions. It would look much better for Clemson to be graduating students who are going to be able to actually go out into the workforce and be productive. Very few students get immediate jobs in management. Typically you have to actually learn how to do something first before you get to manage other people who do that particular job.

Facebook slowing down

When Facebook became available to the public it quickly became one of the most popular sites in the world. In a matter of just a few years, Facebook went from being a small site being run out of a dorm, to a website that takes an entire data center to run. Since then, Facebook has steadily gained members at rates that most people never thought possible. Now that most people in the world have or will soon create Facebook accounts, we will soon reach a point at which the number of total Facebook accounts will actually decline. A lot of students (the original Facebook users) are beginning to realize all the risks of Facebook. With everyone you know having Facebook accounts, you are more vulnerable to having information you consider private being exposed to people you don't want to see it. The more people realize this, the more you will see people deactivating their Facebook accounts. Students especially will realize that by allowing anyone to post things on their Facebook accounts, then allowing their employers to see those accounts, they are putting their self into a very risky situation. This in my opinion will be the reason why many people (including myself) will be deleting or deactivating their Facebook accounts.

web 2.0 technologies- google docs

We began talking about web 2.0 technologies in class this past week. Web 2.0 has quickly revolutionized the internet. While the internet (as the general public knows it) was widely an informational tool at it's creation, it has now become an interactive resource that many people and companies depend on daily. One of the most popular examples of Web 2.0 technologies is the google docs suite. This has quickly become leader in both consumer and enterprise office products. Many companies including Clemson University have implemented Google Docs within their IT environment. One of the key positives about google docs is that for the most part it is completely free. To consumers it is completely free. It's also free to businesses, however some businesses prefer to host their own google server which allows for faster indexing within their organization. Not to get off on a side note, but it's interesting to point out that google doesn't actually make their servers, they buy dell servers, paint them yellow, and put a big google emblem on them. Google also makes it easier for people to ensure they keep up with their files. Google takes care of this by storing all of your files in the "cloud." This is basically just a fancy way of saying they host your stuff on their servers. This office suite has taken a huge chunk out of the microsoft office market share over the last few years and is a perfect example of how web 2.0 technologies have become a way of life for most people.

Evolution of Networks

As I'm sitting here reviewing basic network vocabulary for Jason's test this afternoon, I'm realizing how much networks have evolved over the last 10 years (the amount of time I've been working with IT). The first computer I took apart had a 10 megabit ethernet card and was running through a 56k dialup modem. Residential networking was basically non-existent and even high-performance computing had barely dreamed of gigabit speeds. Now I'm sitting here typing on a computer that is running on a complete gigabit network. Our High-performance computer clusters are using 10 gigabit ethernet cards and fiber optic networks that can potentially get even faster. It's amazing what 10 years of evolution has given us in the world of IT. I can't imagine what we'll have in the next 10 years.

Ipad worthless?

I purchased an Ipad shortly after they were released. I spent $500 on the new Steve Jobs wonder toy. I didn't see a need for the 3g version since I already have an iphone, and I saw no point in paying for more storage since most of the time I have a laptop with me as well. When I first bought the Ipad, I used it every day. Since then, I've used it less and less. I realized today that it hasn't even come out of my bookbag in 2 to 3 weeks. It seems that what I thought would be a very useful tool has turned into a somewhat worthless toy. Anyone want to buy an Ipad?

Blog for MGT455

The blog is very pointless. The only purpose of this blog is for Jason to torture us by forcing us to update something every week.