TOPSY REVIEW

Topsy is an interesting website that can help bloggers figure out who is helping them to share their content and helping to gain views and interest on the bloggers page.  You can use Topsy with various different social media websites.  Topsy was made into its own app and it can also incorporate sites like twitter, flickr, digg, yelp and a few others.  The purpose of Topsy is a little fuzzy to me personally.  I can tell that it is used to show users directly who is sharing and promoting their content.

After viewing a demonstration it seems as if Topsy has a ton of different features and is relatively easy to use.  Every tab is a direct link to where ever it is that you want to go.  The data available seems as if it would be extremely helpful for companies and businesses to manage their blogs and the content that they want shared.  Topsy indexes tweets searches, and even photos.  The cost of Topsy is unclear because it seems as if the cost is dependent on the services that you wish to use.  A strength that Topsy has displayed is that it incorporates so much data and information on one website.  You can find tweets, pictures, bloggs and post all in the same search.  That is cool and shows the public more than what they are asking for. An imperative weakness that I found when trying to use and learn about Topsy is that because it is a search engine it is always coming up in search results.  I was trying to view opinions and reviews on the site and they were nearly impossible to find.  Another weakness is that after viewing the demo it is to my understanding that Topsy is not yet compatible with Safari and Google Chrome which indicates a huge loss of publicity because these two browsers are often used.

Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Through all of the destruction and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it seems as if the damage in Island Park has gone unnoticed, up until recent recognition.  Island Park is a small town that is about a mile long and a mile wide, with a population of an estimated 5,000 people.  Growing up there it was always a familiar joke when people said you can miss it in the blink of an eye, but when the residents needed help the most this humoring joke became a startling reality.  


Still struggling without power and dropping temperatures the community is striving together to help each other out.  I witnessed the aftermath less than a week after the super storm.  The only way I can seem to describe it, is it looked like a war zone.  Chaos, fear, and panic infected the once, happy warm community.  It was devastating.  Aside from the devastation people began looting.  Stealing from people that had already lost everything.  Everything was going wrong and these poor victims did not even have the help that other people did.  Most residents abandoned their homes until help arrived because their children can not live in the conditions that they were given.

Roughly a week after the storm is when help started to arrive  both National Gard and Red Cross came to the needs of Island Park.  One National Gard officer said "This is worse than, Long Beach it resembles Hurricane Katrina.  I am sorry we took so long."  And it was then we realized that we would finally be helped in the way that we deserve. 

Although it took longer than it should have help was finally on its way, and the residents of Island Park could breathe easier with a few burdens lifted.  Corporations like Tide came to show their support yesterday by bringing their "wash truck"  to the disheveled town of Island Park.  This truck is equipped with 32 washers and dryers, and allowing 1 load per family residents can drop off their clothes to be washed, dried, and folded since there is still no power for them. 

Comparing ways of communication

After reading the article "Students’ Perceptions of E-Mail Interaction During Student-Professor Advising Sessions: The Pursuit of Interpersonal Goals" I often found my self agreeing with what the author had to say.  Comparing past ways of communication to now, it is easy to understand why the internet has become such a big part of the typical college students daily life.  The article quotes " Among traditional college age students,
those in the 18- to 29-year-old age group, 88% are internet users."  Shockingly this statistic was much lower then what I would have anticipated.  I live in a house with 3 other girls and there is never a moment when at least one of us is not on the internet, either by phone or laptop.

The assignment of logging communication usage through the internet and the phone, was really a huge eye opener for me.  I never realized how much valuable time is actually wasted doing pointless things surfing the web.  I do not think that I could survive without my phone and that is a huge issue.  Less than four years ago I did not even have this luxury!  Around that time it was not even an option to get my outdated flip phone even near the internet. It is disgusting how much of my life revolves around the social network.  Although I do enjoy different aspects of it, like keeping up with distant friends, or my sister who recently moved to Kentucky, I find it way less personal and way more invasive.  It is sad that this is what communication has come to.  We live in a generation where people find out news through facebook and cant go 10 minutes without sending a text message.  It is sad, and unfortunately it will probably only get worse.

Variations in the web

While working in class Paul and I came up with different examples of what we would consider to be examples of the various webs. 


Web 1.0- is considered to be the very basic web in which communication does not really happen.  It was typically only used to relay information, and it could never be edited by any external source, it only allows people to read from the internet.  An example of this type of web would be a blog that cannot be edited or commented on by other people.

Web 2.0- is considered to be interactive, including people and networking.  This type of web design is most commonly used today.  By using this people can create networks and link them to other sites.  An example of this are social networking websites such as facebook and twitter.

Web 3.0- is known as the semantic web which is going to be the way of the future generation.  The video describe this form of web as a continuation of web techniques that is more present and less visible. It is important to note how the methods of using internet went from huge computers and can now be accessed on small hand held devices.  An example of this is GPS and google.