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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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.
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.
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