Com125 Assignment13: The world linked with the Internet.

The unit, Com125 introduction to the internet is heading toward the end of the course. This com 125 course made me realize how the internet works effectively within our daily lives and around the world. While participating blogging assignments every week, I could see what other classmates think of the same topic, and in this way, I can evaluate my thoughts and opinions based on weekly set topics. The very first week , I signed up to Blogspot and started up my freshly decorated blog. It was just a start of the journey of this semester, but got me a lot of things to think about in relation to the topics of the internet at the end of the semester.

Now I really think that the world is a huge place which is connected with the internet. Since the internet has become a major role of our social networing system, the meaning of community has been changed from the physically limited place to the worldwide social networking gourp in terms of the internet.

Com125 Assignment12: Net Neutrality: The matter of choice on the web

Network Neutrality was the term which I was not familiar with before this week’s assignment, but as I kept searching on the net, the debate for or against Network Neutrality has already been growing. As above, the video clip explains explains why network neutrality is an important issue for internet users through a comparisons to traditional utilities.

What is Network Neutrality?

Put simply, Network Neutrality means no discrimination. Network Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its online source, ownership or destination (http://www.savetheinternet.com/). If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level. According to Public Knowledge, Network Neutrality is about the choice (http://www.publicknowledge.org/). Who chooses to see and uses the contents on the internet? That is us who use the internet everyday. Anytime, we can connect to the internet and get online contents that we want. What makes this possible is ‘network neutrality’. This is because NN prevents the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) blocking access to the websites that you chooses to see.

Now, anytime and anywhere with an acess of the internet, you can go onto Google search engine to get online resources. But, imagine, one day, you can have a problem to access to Google website which possibly means you are restricted to access Google, or getting a really slow access on it. In that case, you will choose to go Yahoo or some other search engines to get the resource. This scenario is possible due to network companies’ financial interest. If Google signed an exclusive agreement with another search engine company for example, Yahoo. It would then be Google’s best interest to converge you to use Yahoo search engine website. Here is the thing. The founder of World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee said that the free market does have certain rules and restrictions, which in itself creates a dialectical relationship. I only hope that the interests of business do not out weight the interest of our "free" society.

Not only in an economical aspect, but also in social and political aspects, Network Neutrality plays an important role. The internet contents are generally open sources to people who want to get them. In the democratic society which we are in, has freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. A huge open source like the internet should not be able to control the users due to economical purposes of network companies. Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Without Network Neutrality, the internet will be more like TV or Radio stations that broadcasting contents are decided by the network owners. If the internet is controlled by the certain regulations of private media corporations, the internet is no longer regarded as an innovative and revolutionary medium for us. Therefore, Network Neutrality should sustain on the web to parallel opportunity for freedon of choice of us.

Com125 Assignment 11: Online Economies in Virtual Communities

Pros of Second Life Economy

We are now living in a community which puts us into various ranges of social networks. Traditionally, offline communities have been defined as cohesive units that provide a gathering place for sharing common interests. Whereas, now in information society, the role of offline communities move onto online so called ‘virtual community’. Though we are belonging to our social network physically, we can create and broaden our social ties on the web. A popular online community website called, ‘Second Life’ offers us a public form of visibility. Second Life does not have physical boundaries within interactions between the users, so that makes possible to widen social network through online activities. Also, Second life use to maintain and existing social capital, together with other forms of communicative contact through chat rooms. It also helps increase existing patterns of social contract and civic involvement. Thus, Second Life can boost your existing ties. Not only providing a place for virtual interactions with each other, but also Second Life has an amazing function for virtual economy. Also, the user can explore the virtual world, meet other users, socialize, participate in economic activities such as creating items and trading those items like virtual property from one another.

Cons of Second Life economy

This trading process is exchanged with the online currency called ‘Linden dollar’. Here is the matter. Let’s say you have Linden US$ 10,000. Can you trust the money that you have? Can you consider the Linden dollars as the real US dollars? Even Linden dollar is an exchange tool for buying and selling things on Second Life community, it could be hard to consider the money as a verified trading tool in terms of a real currency. This is due to the lack of safety of online trades. In real life, banks are intermediates between buyers and sellers and also they keep and manage your money. As long as your money is in bank accounts, we believe that we can get the money when we need. However, who plays the role of the bank in virtual community? Does Second Life organization as safe as real banks which we can invest our money online? Online community where the problem of hacking have become a global issue, I doubt the creditability of the 3D virtual economy.

Among numerous happenings of online communities, I remember one which was broadcasted on news few years ago in South Korea. A 14 year-old boy who was addicted to play an online game called Lineage kept spending US$30 for buying game items for his avatar and every month using his mom’s bank account details. Also, a Lineage player’s ID, password and the information of the game server got hacked and his items which was worth more than US$1,000 was sold by a hacker. Even more, according to Korea Information Security Agency (www.kisa.or.kr), approximately 1.2million crimes happened during trading game items and ID/Password hacking. Even though, an online security section called ‘Item Bay’ on Lineage, but the crimes within virtual economy is easily looked down upon in comparison to real life crimes. The online market in virtual community is now more than 100million us dollars. Significantly, this is not only the problem of the US, but is a growing global issue of 3D virtual community. Online open communities like Second Life do not have any boundaries and also it can be spread rapidly online brining economic issues.

Conclusion

All in all, currently what we need to consider is that users of online community such as Second Life should be aware of the possibility of threatening personal identification. In one way, the impact of Second Life has brought us a new meaning of community and built a new public form of global community. But more importantly, the limitations of issues of contact and privacy of Metaverse 3D world still can occur economic and social problems. The appropriate control of the online market, and producing new security program for protecting personal information, and indicating the cautious problem of online market for people in online community. Therefore, all these solutions for the safer virtual community is embedded by not only the network agencies, but also, government and individual’s efforts.

Online: A better place for new articles

When 9/11 was happened, what we could see on TV was a repeated coverage of the World Trade Center being collapsed by the terrorists’ attack. The certain coverage was going on every TV channel over and over again. However, that is the certain image of what the media broadcast system chose for broadcasting. More sources such as updated images, videos and articles about the 9/11 event was available online. In September 11, 2001, as soon as you went online such as Google, Yahoo or CNN website, you could see all different sorts of information about why 9/11 was happened, who Osama Bin Laden was and where it was happened. Such global news like 9/11, the impact of online news articles and the online images have stronger diffusion effect than print newspapers.

Online newspapers: A variety free source

Online news articles are available online 24/7 free. People can just connect the internet and read the article by a mouse click. Unlike news articles, major print newspapers are not free to get them, and also they contain quite a number of articles and information. Print newspaper readers might find their interests on the first page head line, but what they can know about the specific article is limited. For example, The New York Times published the article about the California wildfire happened Oct. 23 as a main article with an image of a brush fire burning on the first page, but there is nothing more than that. However, The CNN website published the article on the web and noticeably, what I can get from the website is not online the article and the image, but also a lot of links and videos which are related to the ‘wildfire’ event in California.

Presentation of Online and Print newspapers

The way they present the articles are different. I read the article titled ‘Victims in Wildfire’s Fickle Path Say, Why ME?’ published on The New York Times on Oct. 24. As soon as I got the newspaper, the main picture on the first page caught my attention straight away. The image was a helicopter prepared to drop water on a brush fire burning yesterday in Escondido, California. Compared to the big strong image, the article of the wildfire was not written much which was totally a little article on the main page and continually half page of the page A13. While it was happened, that was the main event which I wanted to more about, but I could not find various and interesting sources about the event. On CNN website, I could click a link to a video clip showing where it was happened, and the situation of the wildfire moment. Whereas, the print newspapers can possibly be biased on a certain view, the internet newspapers are mostly likely fair. This is because you can link to other websites quickly, so the online article reader can look up the article in various points of view.

Reference:

http://search.cnn.com/search.jsp?query=wildfire,

Wednesday, October 24 2007, The New York Times 'Victims in Wildfire's Fickle Path say, why me?'

Com125 Assignment9: Jame Oddo, a YouTube politican star

Personally, until couple of years ago, subjects about politics are not one which I am interested in as well as articles about politicians. Unless a political article published on the first page of the newspaper, I would not bothered to know about politics. However, now the articles, stories and even gossips about politicians are available not only on newspapers, but online web blogs. As I surf the web, I read an article about politics and get to know more about it. The sphere of politics is not an enervated and boring story anymore, is an easily accessible and interesting topic on the net to people.

Com125 Assignment8: 'MSN web messenger' review application

The site: MSN Messenger
URL: http://webmessenger.msn.com

Functionality

MSN Messenger is a freeware instant messaging client that was developed and distributed by Microsoft in 1999 to 2005 and in 2007 for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system (except Windows Vista), and aimed towards home users. It was renamed Windows Live Messenger in February 2006 as part of Microsoft's Windows Live series of online services and software. MSN Messenger is often used to refer to the .NET Messenger Service (the protocols and server that allow the system to operate) rather than any particular client (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Msn_messenger).

A discussion of the site’s design

Unlike other websites, MSN messenger provides a small screen sized a quarter of normal websites which makes convenient to open up the web browser while working on other websites. While you talk to others, you can customize the chat screen to whatever you want to make and send it to web-chat partners. Also, there is a number of emoticons available using IM such as smiley faces, winks and nudges which you can use on web chats by a click. On MSN messenger, you can see a lot of links which connect to the websites, so that you can check emails while on MSN messenger, easily link to the internet shopping website, or a game website. This is how it is designed for MSN Microsoft to advertise their products.

Social aspects

As soon as I get home, the first thing I do is turning on my laptop. While doing it, I am logging onto MSN messenger automatically. Also, after meeting a friend from a class or anywhere, one thing that I ask before I go home is, “Do you have a MSN ID?” Since the internet have provided a place to interact with people online, MSN messenger became so popular among friends and colleagues. We can talk online after classes and works. It gives us a different pleasure to communicate online with people compared to offline interactions. In that sense, MSN messenger keeps going our social ties and relationships interactive.

Not only keeping interactions with people, but MSN messenger is productive. While you log onto it, you can share mutimedia files between friends. Also, as soon as logging onto MSN web messenger, a little screen pops up and show news headlines of current hot issues. Thus, everyday MSN messenger provides somethings productive for me.

Beneficial aspects of MSN messenger

One of the great benefits of MSN messenger is a fast and convenient communication with others online. Even more, the conversations between me and others can be saved in computer hardware as well as all instant messages. Even if the message receivers are not online, you can still send instant messages, and they will be stored until the friend logs on and checks them out. At once, people can have multiple conversations with many friends. I have friends who I do not meet often physically, but I can still keep in touch with them for years through MSN messenger. MSN messenger is not only an online software which keeps people interactive, but it is where people share files and interests in the global wide.

Com125 Assignment7: Online community: where people build their relationships

The meaning of friendship

How can we define the term, friends? As we live in the society where people are able to connect to each other online, the meaning of friendship is getting blurry. In the past, about 10 years ago, friends mean a lot to each individuals, which indicates friends are people forming relationships with us doing physical activities. However, now in 2007, we can easily form a relationship based on the online network though a number of online blogs and an internet access across the world.

“When I see somebody with a large number of supposed friends, I suspect that they’re using the term ‘friend’ to mean ‘acquaintance,’ or that their motives in getting Friendster-recorded friends are not really about the relationships for the their own sake.” — Bob (danah boyd 2006: Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites)

When we go on our friends' web blogs, we see lists of friends, or celebrities who are linked to people's web blogs. We think that they are cool with bunch of friends' list. As an exmaple of Facebook, we can go on others' blogs and find out who they are, what univeristy they go to, and who they hang out with mostly and so forth. From what is represented on blogs, we think that we know a lot about someone and become a 'friend'. Through my friend's friend, and their friends' friends, we keep expanding our social relationships online for the sake of popularity. Are they really 'friends' or just 'colletors of acquaintances'?

Online Community: A place to maintain social relationships

A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media rather than face to face (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community). The fact that people can interact with others and moreover, form social ties without face to face relationships, attracts online users to join the online communities. Because it is online community which is linked through Web browswer, it can be spread out so quickly. This is one of the attactions why online communities are becoming more popular. You can just go online and type friend's ID to add him/her as my 'friend'. Compared to offline community, online community is a lot simpler to contact to each other between friends. If someone leaves a message on my Facebook blog, I can simply reply to the message. Whereas, to communicate in offline communities, people should make a time and get together which involves time consuming.

Online communities offer more chances to get involved in relationship with friends than offline communities. Though I've been travelling and studying abroad for years, I could still keep in touch with friends from my old schools. A website called, 'www.iloveschool.co.kr' provides a place for people look for their friends and teachers from their elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. Once I join the website and add my schools and the completed year of the study, I can see friends/teachers who joined the website and message them. Sometimes, I can even talk to them online on webchats. So far, I've found a lot of friends and teachers from my high school through the website. Not only looking for friends online, but online communities keeps maintaining relationships with people by emailing and messaging to eachother no matter where they live. Therefore, online communites are now located in us playing as a webmessenger role for our social ties and relationships.


Reference:

danah boyd 2006: Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community

Com125 Assignment 6: ‘Second Life; Self and Online Identity’

What is online identity?

Wikipedia clarifies an online identity as a social identity that network users establish in online communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity). Donath mentions that a single person can create multiple electronic identities that are linked only by their common progenitor, that link, though invisible in the virtual world, is of great significance (Donath, 1996). In the reading, Donath also tries to find out the relationship among multiple personas sharing a single progenitor. Considering the fact that we are living in the information age, a lot of people start their daily routine start with checking the emails, and webpages and finish their days with checking the emails and the web pages’ posts. By experiencing the online life as a big part of their lives, people can find their new identities in a new space called cyberworld, and moreover, they try to generate multiple identities and keep developing them as parts of themselves. This phenomenon can be looked at as a challenge of their stable identities in a real life. Therefore, we all can have new ‘me’ in online community using avatar though it is a completely different self as compared to who I am in a real life. Avatar, which is a graphic icon presenting myself online for web chats, 2D or 3D online games and even more for cyber-shopping and cyber-education. The use of avatar becomes broad and various on the cyber world. In the past, people were attracted only for anonymity, but in modern days, they feel like expressing themselves more in the cyber world through the avatar. Thus, this popular graphic technology called avatar was only available as Ready-made characters which we could only combine with few online items, but now more various types of avatars are available, thus users can make their unique avatar in virtual communities.

Trans-gendered Avatar

By using the avatar, people can show themselves as a completely different self as their real lives. Interestingly, many of online users even present themselves as a different gendered avatar. A male web user make up a female avatar online and interact with other web users online. He tries to talk like a female online and express the avatar with pretty and girly accessories. The problem which could be occurred here is the confusion between his real identity and virtual identity. As much time he spends online as a girl, his real-world identity can get influenced by the virtual identity. One of my gay friends, he actually does this gender swapping a lot in cyber world. In the real world, he does not look like a gay at all, but on the web, he totally turns himself as a girl. I do not think that gender swapping means bad at all, but this certainly is a shocking thing for me. When I first met him at my previous work, I did not know that he was a gay, but after I looked at his online webpages like Myspace, Facebook and Friendster, I found that he was a gay or a person who has a little mental problem. I see this phenomenon with a pretty positive view. Everyone has different personalities and perspectives. Genuinely, they are sensitive and introversive, they can be extroversive and outgoing online if that is what they want to be presented at least in cyber world. Therefore, cyber world can be seen as a new second life for us, and this fact can show our society as a new open world which offers various types of opportunities.

Com125 Assignment5: Privacy In The Information Age

Internet Privacy Issues

What is privacy? Wikipedia defines internet privacy is the ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the internet, and to control who can access that information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy). Since the internet access have become pervasive globally, privacy issues has been brought up as a significant part of the side effects in the information society. As an extreme example of Hollywood movie stars, their privacy is so open to the paparazzi and public. We can even know their personal daily lives through their photos and gossips on the magazines and the internet. The gossips of the Hollywood stars are not just open to the public, but also spread out through the internet world widely. The author of the book called Invasion of Privacy, Michael Hyatt says that the invasion of technology affects the whole US society; a credit card crime, an illegal use of others’ name, stalking and the surveillance of the government can bring a serious social conflict. All these serious privacy issues can erode both at work and at home by new technology. Therefore, the privacy issues caused by the internet technology should not be ignorant as an inevitable problems in the information age.

Spam mail and Internet Privacy

Spam mail is one of the most efficient tools for advertising within the digital media age. Every single time, when I check my email, I see at least about 5spam mails in my mailbox. I guess I receive more than 10 spam mails every single day. The types of spam mails vary such as advertising their products like cosmetics and clothing, promoting personal loans, persuading me to join social clubs and even pornographic pictures with the source of websites. Just deleting these spam mails are annoying, but even more, sometimes I cannot even recognize if the mail that I received is spam, or an email from my friend. The advertising strategy of spam mails is becoming more tactful and tricky. Sometimes, the tile of the spam mail starts with my name, or asking me an urgent favor; ‘Hi, Jennifer!’, ‘Urgent!’ or ‘Hey’. These types of titles trigger me to open up the emails at the end. This often freaks me out to know that someone can actually see my personal information from somewhere. Thus, after all my personal information is available out there somewhere to be picked by marketers or whoever wanting to use my ID. My age, gender, university, homework address, phone number and social number are ready for someone to use my identifications. This is what I feel every time when I end up opening the spam mails in my personal mail box. This common phenomenon can certainly defined as a case within invasion of privacy.

To avoid these types of cases on the internet, lately many popular websites provide the vaccine programs. However, there still is a problem with the vaccine program as well. As an example of well know Korean search engine called ‘Daum’ provides a virus vaccine program for spam mails called, ‘Spambot’ which filters spam mails and send them into the spam mail box. But, at times, I see my email from my friend is in the spam mail box. I see that this is the other type of invasion of privacy. Under the name of surveillance and protection from spam mails, the website is actually invading my privacy by filtering my personal emails. Not only ‘Daum’, but data from major Internet companies, including Yahoo! and MSN (Microsoft) have already been subpoenaed by the US and China even provided a chunk of its own search data online, allowing reporters to track the online behavior of private individuals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy). In anyways, as long as we are connected to the internet, our privacy can be tracked down somehow through programs such as Cookies or ISPs(Internet Service Provider) on the purpose of avoiding damages from invading privacy on the web. Therefore, in the age of the information society which we are in, the people should be able to define an appropriate level of privacy based on their lifestyle, financial resources, and personal values.



Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
http://www.daum.net
http://www.powells.com

Com125 Assignment3: 'Music Downloading; Sharing? or Stealing?'

Since MP3 becomes to play an important role for majority people’s daily lives, filesharing issue became a controversial matter. On one side, file sharing is not necessarily illegal . On the other side is focused on issues predominant proportion of material shared subject to copyright. Napster, Kazaa, iTune, UGRE, Spiralfrog and Qtax are well known existing websites for downloading audio files on the web. Internet users can access and download all various genres of music at home sitting down in front of the computer, instead of going to music store and looking for a CD. Since there are numerous music downloading websites are available, this topic is worthwhile to discuss about. In recent days, it has become a necessarily significant issue to think about if music downloading can be regarded as sharing files, or stealing copyright in the virtual network society.

What is music downloading?

Music downloading can be defined that it refers to the transferring of a music file from an internet facing computer or website to a user’s local computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_downloading). Lately, it is so common to download song files to our personal computers and store them in MP3 players. We can get songs for free. Music downloading encompasses both meanings of legal downloads and downloads of material without permission or payment which people break copyright laws. Most of people like music thus; music downloading was started from the concept of file sharing based on peer-to-peer networks.

Music downloading: Copyright infringement

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of approved files which is covered by copyright law, in a manner that breaks one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make copied material that build upon it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement).

There are many cases of copyright infringement globally. It has been brought up in many different countries such as the US, the UK, Australia, South Korea, China and Japan. Copyright infringement became an issue about all countries who has the internet access for people. In 2006, South Korea, the most popular music download website called, ‘Monkey3’ was sued by the Association of Korean music producers and singers for providing free music files to download. It was a shock among young people especially, due to no more free music downloading access. However, what people did was looking for other websites offering free audio file downloads. The internet is unlimited information storage, and there exists billions of URLs that people can access anytime. At the end, more free music downloading websites were sued after ‘Monkey3’ was charged for their illegal music downloading offers. Once ‘Monkey3’ had to change their policy to download music files to charge for the songs using online cash. Since this change, ‘Monkey3’ have lost quite a number of users, and now they charge only for new released songs, not the entire audio file downloads.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), illegal music downloading can damage the music industry and a series of law suits led to many of these networks being closed down. In the US, the illegal downloading of music from the internet websites has influenced music industry billions of dollars loss in revenues to publishers and artists. This fact shows how the music downloading can be an inevitable economical threat to music industry. The linked webpage below shows a great moving image called 'Fighting Music Piracy'.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vEkhkBGnrYo

Music Downloading: Ethics of sharing files

“I think it’s OK to download files from the Net, even it is illegal.”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_file_sharing). According to a poll, 75% of young voters in Sweden (ages 18-20), support file sharing, even if it's illegal. Ethics of file sharing is a subfield of ethics specifically relating to the ethical implications of file sharing over computer networks and the internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_file_sharing). Though the internet network, people can share files by downloading visual and audio files which are copyrighted and non-copyrighted to each other. One of the popular peer-to-peer file sharing websites called Kazaa became legal after paying a $100 million in reparations to the recording industry. It still offers a download on its official website for Kazaa 3.25 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa#Current_state). There are many file sharing advocates are out there and they see free music downloads are a part of consumer culture to have a sample before getting an original product. Through downloading music files, people can reach the music artists easily and get to know more about them and their music. Also, from the downloaded music over the internet, people can start feeling interested in certain songs and become a fan of the artists. Overall, music downloading can activate the music industry not only nationally, but also globally. Me as one of the file sharing advocates, downloading music files for free from the internet is an inevitable phenomenon in the technological society. Normally, the files available on the web free do not offer a full quality of the music. People who want an original product will go out and buy the full legal product with all great bonus features. Therefore, downloading free music files on the net is about freedom for the internet users over the peer-to-peer networks.


Referece:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vEkhkBGnrYo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_downloading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_file_sharing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa#Current_state

Com125 Assignment2: A new "Dot-Com"Boom and the current society

What’s a “Dot-com” boom?

YouTube has 100 million video downloads a day, and 73 million viewers a month, and by acquiring it Google has increased the amount of video streams it controls by a factor of 10.
MySpace has 14 million viewers a month - mainly young people, a group that the traditional media is finding hard to reach. And Skype has 53 million users, with its technology widely perceived as a threat to traditional telecoms companies. Many of the acquisitions are about acquiring online communities, the fastest-growing section of internet use. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6036337.stm)

Youtube, Google and Skype are all familiar internet websites which we use often. These websites seem to dominate the market on the web.


‘Historically, the dot-com boom can be seen as similar to a number ofother technology-inspired booms of the past including railroads in the1840s, radio in the 1920s, transistor electronics in the 1950s, computertime-sharing in the 1960s, and home computers and biotechnology in theearly1980s.’(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=History_of_the_World_Wide_Web).

How “Dot-com” boom influenced youth culture in recent days?

Jen on the block

My name is Jennifer and I am currently a senior exchange student at UB from Monash University in Australia. This fall is my first semester at UB. How great university this is at Buffalo in New York. While I was looking for a university for an exchange program, I met a girl called Hannah who came to my home university as an exchange student from UB . She was the one who introduced me UB and now I am here! Before I came to Buffalo, all what I’ve heard about NY Buffalo was Buffalo wings. Other than that, I knew nothing about buffalo at all. I applied for an exchange program to SUNY only because it is located in New York state. Now I know that Buffalo is not a place to go to New York city in couple of hours. But I’d love to know more about Buffalo especially snow in winter season which I cannot find in snow-free Australia. I am a 22 years old communication and behavioral studies major and looking forward to having a graduation ceremony in March, 2008.

I love kids and would love to teach them in the future. After completing my undergraduate degree, I am going to study for a graduate course, Diploma of Education for primary teaching. The course goes for one year and I can’t wait to practice teaching in primary schools. To think of meeting kids and being able to teach them give me goosbum.

Though I’m not a great dancer, I enjoy learning dancing a lot. While I was staying in Melbourne, Australia, I was used to go to Jazz dance class every week. Dancing is such a great fun to get rid of stress from all the school work and stimulate my endorphin.

My first visit for studying in the U.S starts at UB. Huge campus and great people have already given me a good impression about UB. This fall semester, as my last semester of my bachelor degrees, I believe this experience at UB will offer me a great fun and a through way for my future career.

In this semester, I have taken 12 credits of all communication units, Introduction to the internet is only unit which looks realistic and fun, not so much focusing on communication theories. Also, it is obvious that the internet plays a significant role in the globe. It would be necessary and fun to learn more about the internet use and the system with my own blog!

Jen on the block

My name is Jennifer and I am currently a senior exchange student at UB from Monash University in Australia. This fall is my first semester at UB. How great university this is at Buffalo in New York. While I was looking for a university for an exchange program, I met a girl called Hannah who came to my home university as an exchange student from UB . She was the one who introduced me UB and now I am here! Before I came to Buffalo, all what I’ve heard about NY Buffalo was Buffalo wings. Other than that, I knew nothing about buffalo at all. I applied for an exchange program to SUNY only because it is located in New York state. Now I know that Buffalo is not a place to go to New York city in couple of hours. But I’d love to know more about Buffalo especially snow in winter season which I cannot find in snow-free Australia. I am a 22 years old communication and behavioral studies major and looking forward to having a graduation ceremony in March, 2008.

I love kids and would love to teach them in the future. After completing my undergraduate degree, I am going to study for a graduate course, Diploma of Education for primary teaching. The course goes for one year and I can’t wait to practice teaching in primary schools. To think of meeting kids and being able to teach them give me goosbum.

Though I’m not a great dancer, I enjoy learning dancing a lot. While I was staying in Melbourne, Australia, I was used to go to Jazz dance class every week. Dancing is such a great fun to get rid of stress from all the school work and stimulate my endorphin.

My first visit for studying in the U.S starts at UB. Huge campus and great people have already given me a good impression about UB. This fall semester, as my last semester of my bachelor degrees, I believe this experience at UB will offer me a great fun and a through way for my future career.

In this semester, I have taken 12 credits of all communication units, Introduction to the internet is only unit which looks realistic and fun, not so much focusing on communication theories. Also, it is obvious that the internet plays a significant role in the globe. It would be necessary and fun to learn more about the internet use and the system with my own blog!