Healy, Rita. Fraternities and Facebook: A New Recruiting Tool. Time Magazine, April 15, 2009.

Almost everyone has now become a member, or at least has heard, of the popular Facebook craze that has hit over that past couple of years. Well, in 2004, fraternities at the University of Colorado were made to give in to strick Greek laws after two freshmen students died of alcohol poisoning while pledging in a fraternity house. The sororities agreed with the Universities demands, however, the fraternities did not and decided to move off-campus. Once membership dropped to twenty-four in the SAE house, Facebook allowed these guys to create events and groups and get themselves out in the open again. Royal Carson, president of the SAE chapter, wanted to let everyone see that fraternities aren't as stereotypical as everyone thinks they are. Surveys were completed in 2005, asking students how they found out about the fraternities, and most of the replied, "...through the Internet." President and CEO of North American Interfraternity Conference, Pete Smithhisler, believes sororites and fraternities have more of an online presence now more than ever.
I have never joined a fraternity or even thought about joining one, but I think this article just shines another light on the fact that networking through Facebook, MySpace, and e-mails has proved to be the best way of spreading information. Speaking from experience, using Facebook and MySpace has taken my band, SmoothOp, to a whole other level. According to Time Magazine, these guys stalk Facebook in order to get the sufficient amount of pledges for their organization. That's not always the best way, but who's going to tell them they shouldn't?

Sutter, John D. “No problems so far as April Fools’ computer worm awakens.” April 1, 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/01/tech.viruses/index.html.

Mostly anyone with access to a computer has heard about the worm, Conficker, which was (or is) supposed to hit a large percentage of computers around the world, attacking only Microsoft run computers (which means anyone with a Mac is good to go). If this worm really does happen, then the author of Conficker will be able to access such material as financial information and even key strokes on any one computer that the worm infects. It creates web sites that interact with infected computers. Experts say that this new worm, which generates 50,000URL’s a day, is nothing compared to a previous version of Conficker that only generated 250 URL’s a day. While the Washington Post mocked this new Conficker worm on a tech blog, senior vice president of technology for Enigma Software, Patrick Morganelli, thinks that the worm could hit tomorrow, 2 weeks from now, or could even be a couple months from now. Whatever the matter, other experts are worried that we won’t be able to protect ourselves if and when this happens.
Well, I think that, like a lot of other things, it has been only a matter of time before someone could figure out what it takes to hijack the internet, send viruses, whatever. We have all taken the freedom of the internet for granted, while some genius (or more) waits with his or her high-tech computer for the right moment in time to takeover, this time, Microsoft-based computers. I’ve never heard of any one, huge “thing” that could possibly take away what everyone loves to do the most, get on their computer. How can it infect 116 countries across the globe, except for Ukraine? If that’s where he or she is, how do we find them? Who knows what will happen if you take people’s internet away…I can only imagine something bad.

Information Navigation 101

As information literacy has been a growing, constant definition since about 1974, so has the means of teaching and educating students in college as well as high school. On top of colleges and high schools, we have companies such as Educause, Unesco, and the National Forum on Information Literacy that are able to advertise information literacy on a worldwide basis. Diane G. Oblinger, vice president of Educause, believes that since we live in a world where the internet is the most convenient source for information, we must learn and develop the skills to be efficient with today's technological diversity. Universities, like the University of North Texas and Cal State Fullerton, are starting to create more room for the instruction of information literacy and it's importance. A few of these schools have started requiring that students be tested on information literacy, with tests such as the ICT Literary Assessment, in order to help students grasp the meaning of information literacy in their everyday lives.
Looking back at my high school years, I think about how much different of a perspective I would have on the effects of information literacy and its importance, mostly in the past 5 years to the present. Generations to come are going to interact with technologies similar to my generation's interactions, but it's going to be seemingly more complicated with a need to know more about the inflows and outflows of information. Tests are a good idea in high school and in college to keep society information literate across the globe.

People of our ever-so-growing world of information and technology are beginning to worry about the effects of having easy access to major search engines such as Google. At Carnegie Mellon University, James Morris, dean of the School of Computer Science, has brought about the use of the word “infobesity”. Morris parallels this, along with all the other problems the U.S. faces, with Google results. He does not think that the searches bring about educated searches that really give you what you need, but just junk. Studies have shown that many students have problems with library databases, or just do not care enough to spend quality time searching libraries for the higher quality information, and sometimes more complex systems the library has to offer. Massey-Burzio, department head at Johns Hopkins University’s library, believes that if we take the right steps and begin a fresh approach to the idea of “Google-izing” library databases, libraries around the country could get more students to participate more with their fellow library. In order to make this work libraries need not just faculty, but database engineers as well to help with this collaboration.
I can say first-hand that I have not put forth a lot of effort in getting anything out of the information the library has to offer, although I have never had a class that has made so that I must do that for research until now. Google is the one of the easiest ways to find information, but is it the healthiest? We’ve talked about information literacy and quality of information that Google sometimes portrays with a search. However, I think that if libraries are able to “Google-ize” their databases, they will create a higher percent of willingness of the students to access them. It may take time and money, but that’s what the increase in tuition is for. Benefits would eventually outweigh the costs and faculty and students profit from that.

Zemen, Eric . February 17, 2009. “MWC 2009: Android Phone Finally Appears From HTC”
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/02/mwc_2009_androi_1.html;

Starting yesterday, the new Android phone that is making people crazy was discussed at a press conference between Vodafone and HTC. It is called the Magic, that is a touch phone without the physical keyboard, but it still has the normal trackball and navigation keys for using applications and the phones internal system. It has a three point two inch display, Gmail, IMAP, and Google Talk to make instant messaging a lot easier. It is also equipped with a WebKit browser that contains certain Google services such as Maps, a search engine, and YouTube. The Magic will only be sold by Vodafone in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., with the conference not mentioning anything about bringing the Magic to the United States. It will be coming out this Spring.
I think that this is going to be one of the coolest phones around, well not here, but in Europe I suppose. It’s going to be very interesting to see if, eventually, Vodafone tries to push sales of the Magic towards the United States, and how much they would consider a selling price to be in order to compete with every other cool phone in the states. I wonder if this is their way of keeping separate markets and create more competition in the U.S.. Vodafone could hold off for a while until enough advertising is done here in the United States ( by Vodafone) and make more money by charging more for exporting the Magic, which could be a very profitable task.

Wikipedia

Anyone who has used a computer in the last three years has had to have heard about the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Alexander Halavais, and many others, have spent a lot of time assessing the validity and nature of Wikipedia. Halavais, a professor at Quinnipiac University, did an experiment for himself by adding thirteen errors into various articles on the website. This is very easy to do since anyone can register and make any changes to any article. About three hours later, Halavais noticed that his intentional errors had been deleted, because Wikipedia has editors that check on updated posts every day. However, since he did not do the “best job” of testing Wikipedia, Halavais claims that someone much more determined to be a “troll”, as many call them, could have made a much better attempt in giving and hiding incorrect information. For example, a man named John Seigenthaler, a journalist, had found a Wikipedia entry which stated that he had been “directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations…”. It is examples like that that worry many scholars. A journal with the name, Nature, did a comparative study between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia and found that an average Britannica article contained three errors while the Wikipedia averaged four. Wikipedia will always have it’s skeptics on whether what your reading is true, slightly bended, or just completely wrong, but there are also people thinking of revolutionizing a way to obtain just facts of scholarly writing.
This whole Wikipedia thing seems like a mess, but then with some of the claims in the article it’s hard to determine who is right and who is wrong, aside from the fact of trying to figure out the validity of Wikipedia itself. To be honest, I didn’t even know, until about three months ago, that it was even possible to edit Wikipedia articles. However, I really don’t know why that should be allowed in the first place. Yes, maybe there are people who know enough about a certain subject or have been through a certain experience that may have shed a light on a new perspective or idea, but I don’t think “internet goers”, especially with all the dangerous websites and misinformation spread throughout, should be allowed to edit what we know as the encyclopedia. If you want to search an online encyclopedia, you should be able to do so without worrying about it being false. At the same time, I believe that someone searching for information should try many sources and make their own reasonable decision if what they’re reading is the right thing.

Web Hoaxes, Counterfeit Sites, and Other Spurious Info on the Internet

Over the years, there have been many counterfeit, malicious, and ficticious internet web sites that create disinformation on many subjects. Misinformation is usually thought to mean "wrong" information, while alot of the issues that are brought up as incorrect are more based on opinion rather than fact. To start, we have counterfeit web sites. Counterfeit sites mainly disguise themselves as the real web site just to create "disseminating" misinformation. These sites can be divided into several categories: political, fun, of instructional. On the other hand we have suspicious web sites, by which the reading states that there are too many to even list on paper. Some contain photographs of lynching and hate crimes while other sites try to claim that certain historical events did not place, like the Holocaust. News on the internet has been a huge problem as well with even news professionals on Fox News and ESPN. In the U.S., many internet "goers" rely on the news they search for on the web and the search should be credible, but it isn't always. Disinformation is defined as the the dissemination of deliberately false information, which came into use in 1954. With that comes the possible severity of harmful and incorrect information when it comes to health and businesses, which can lead to serious injury or even leave a business in financila ruin. I do not know what kind of person you have to be in order to understate or completely post a website with false information to intentionally harm someone. I hope people that do that and get in trouble for it suffer the consequences. I mean, would that not be a serious offense?
Most of the time, attckes to a corporate website are usually due to someone who is upset about losing there job, angry customers, or even citizens who are very serious about their political views. Next, you have parodies and spoofs, which are pretty much the same thing. Many people everyday end up searching a spoofed web site, however, I think this day in age has become a very gullible societ believing, or wanting to believe everything they hear and see. I think that as long as the internet is around, we will always hear of rebellion, viruses, scams, and false information, but it is up to us to "look past the hood of our car" and dig deeper so that one day not everyone will be sucked into the the dissemination of information.