Tech+articles+Sem1

Please enter your technology article summary below. Use the format in the assignment outline.

by Miguel Helft, October 9, 2007 source: NYTimes summary submitted by Ms. S. Google's powerful AdSense network is adding a new service to those users in their ad network. It will begin embedding related videos from some You Tube creators. If you have a blog or a Web site about skateboarding you can choose to embed skateboarding videos from YouTube on your page. This is the first major combination of a Google product with YouTube. These videos will be surrounded by ads. There are other distributors of videos and ads on the Web but Google's AdSense is much bigger than any of them. Of course many sites and blogs already embed YouTube clips on their pages but Google said they would share the ad revenue ($) they get from this additional use with the YouTube video creators and the Web sites that embed them. This is new. How much money video creators or Web pages would make from this collaboration is unknown. The other problem is if you choose to embed some skateboarding YouTube video in your page through the Google AdSense network you won't have control over __which__ skateboarding videos go up. Google will make those decisions. Medium to large Web sites are not likely to want arbitrary content showing up on their sites so they probably won't go for this. Small sites with relatively few visitors are more likely to try this. This seems to be a example of how a mashup works - two or more Web content areas meshing together to create a new use. Google is constantly thinking of new ways to make money a few cents at a time. This may be just a foot in the door. Google may have something else they are getting ready to distribute through AdSense that will make bigger bucks in the future.
 * Google Plans Service to Allow Advertisers to use YouTube Video Content**

Link to Myspace in college admissions page

By TINA KELLEY, October 9, 2007 Source: NYTimes Summery submitted by Benjamin Bogart Mr. Frye, a ninth grade English teacher in Montclair N.J has done the unthinkable. He has given the parents of his student’s homework assignments. They have had to read and comment stories, songs, and speeches. He states that if the parents do not do their work and do not give a reason, their children’s grade suffers. But, he describes that when the parents neither did their homework nor explained why, a student did lose points - but not enough to lower the student’s overall grade. Personally, I like the idea of giving homework to parents so that they can understand how us students feel. Although that is true, I believe that the children’s personal grade shouldn’t suffer from their parent’s actions.
 * Spreading Homework Out So Even Parents Have Some**

Source: New York Times By DANIEL GOLEMAN Summary by Robert Paller
 * E-Mail is Easy to Write (and to misread)**

“The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand,” (GOLEMAN 1). E-mail is becoming the preferred way to communicate with people either for social interest, business, or educational purposes. This is because e-mail is fast, extremely convenient, and enables us to stay in contact with people who we wouldn’t be able to see face to face, or pay a lot of money for a long distance call. Yet there is a problem with this aspiring tool; many times e-mails are terrible misread. The misreading of e-mails comes from the brain’s disability to pick up emotion from a computer screen. During “Face-to-face” interaction, the brain can translate facial expressions and body language to get a better understanding of the message the speaker is trying to convey. Over e-mail, a reader is on different wavelengths with the sender, and doesn’t tend to get the full emotion. The main miscommunication in the emotion of messages sent that are positive seem to be taken as neutral and neutral messages seen to be taken as negative. It has been proven that the people receiving jokes rate them less funny than the senders intended it on being. A telecommunications professor at NYU, Clay Shirky once said, “When you communicate with a group you only know through electronic channels, it’s like having functional Asperger’s Syndrome – you are very logical and rational but emotionally brittle” (Shirky 3). Misreading e-mails can lead to problems between friends, peers, and colleagues. This is a large flaw with e-mail and a new system could be helpful to the understanding of such technologies.

Facebook Agrees to More Safeguards By ANNE BARNARD Source: NY Times Summary submited by Sage Lancaster Facebook has agreed to post more warnings for the safety of the children that use the website and it has also agreed to “hire an independent company to track its responses to complaints”. This article talks about how facebook has banned access to children under 13 years of age and it is encourage for parents of older kids to monitor their children’s activity on this website. Myspace, which is one of the biggest competitors of facebook recently banned 29,000 sex offenders from Myspace. Facebook is making easy to get to links so that users can easily report sexual harassment online. An attorney general in Conneticut, Richard Blumenthal believes that minors and adults facebook profiles should be separated and that facebook should screen racist or violent content. “Investigators from the attorney general’s department of economic justice, led by Eric Corngold” pretended to be teenagers and received sexual messages from adults after only a few days of posting their membership. I believe that this is not true because I have had a facebook and most of my friends have facebooks, and I have never received any such messages as these. I am aware that facebook can be dangerous but there are lots of privacy options that you can choose so that none of these things happen. Facebook is a fun place to talk with friends but you always have to take caution.

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold By Cornelia Dean April 17, 2007 Source: New York Times Summary submitted by Audrey As fields of math, science, and engineering continue to grow with women, men are dominating the field of computer science. In 1985, 48 percent of the bachelor’s degrees from United States’ universities in Computer Sciences were awarded to women, yet in 2004 it fell to 28 percent. The number of women generally enrolled in graduate programs in computer science is ever worsening. Lenore Blum, a computer scientist has said, “Women are the canaries in the coal mine”. Blum was referring to the fact that the same reasons that are turning women off of computer science will eventually drive away men as well. As companies look to other countries for technological help, mainly looking for access to talent, people think there are no jobs in the computer science industry. This is not true; there are many crucial jobs in the industry needed to advance medicine, ecology, law, chemistry, and many other fields of our society using technology. In high school, many women are driven away from technology thinking only “nerds” like computers. Once they decide to write off computer science, they rarely take a coarse so they can be corrected. Programs have become more available for women of all ages, and admission standards have been changed, hoping to draw in more women into the field. As our society balances out between men and women, both find a passion for technology because they first give it a chance. For technology to develop we need the perspective of everyone especially women. Technology is becoming the basis of our world, and if that world is to be an equal environment for everyone, men and women must work together to take on the challenges and benefits of computer science.

Teaching tools By: Jeffrey Selingo Source: New York Times Summary by Lily ☺

Seventh graders are making podcasts about science, bullies, or just interesting stories. Now, kids are able to buy them on the itunes store and learn from them. It is exciting for the children to know that their podcasts are going out to people all over the world. It motivates them to do I really good job since they no that so many other people will be listening in. This idea of a podcast for learning has caught on to many schools. Currently, itunes has 400 podcasts from kindergarteners to 12th graders (New York Times). Some podcasts are made by teachers with tips for other teachers or students. Another good thing that pocasts do is that they teach students to research, which is a very good thing to know how to do. Students have been making audio programs for a while now but computer-recording systems are much easier to use. The problem with this system is that a lot of teachers don’t know how to use computers very well. This can be solved by a teacher going to one meeting where they teach them how to use this easily learned skill. Although this technology can never be replaced by a real teacher, it is a good secondary tool.

Even In Myspace, a Friend Has to Qualify By Noam Cohen October 15, 2007 Source: New York Times Summary by: Azcon Doris Lessing is an author that has a Myspace. She does not have anything to do with her myspace because as she says she is not an internet person. The fact that she has a Myspace is so extravagant because she's 87 years old. The person who runs her Myspace is her recent #1 fan Ms. Jan Hanford. Ms Lessing's publishing company is surprised at her Myspace page saying that a woman her age is not known to have one.

Privacy lost: These Phones can see you By:Laura M. Holson Source: New York Times Summary Submitted by: Nia James

In this day and age, with technology on the rise (and almost everyone owning a cell phone), privacy is being lost. Trough a new system called “Loopt” people are able to now track one another through their cell phones. On the plus side, parents are able to keep track of their wondering children, and people are able to track their friends when running late, and adjust their plans accordingly. “Young people…feel comfortable sharing information in a digital society,” therefore, this new high-tech system is mostly popular among collage students. Another beneficiary aspect of these look trackers, are when someone can use them to track someone with Alzheimer’s in order to make sure of their whereabouts. This system can be turned off and on as pleased, and one you must be a friend in their network in order to see their location. Although there are many beneficiary aspects, there are also many negatives. Socially, if a spouse wants some alone time, and they turn off the device for a couple of hours, the spouse would have reason to be concerned. The other negative, is that if the phone company is tracking your location in order to give it to others, the phone company will know where you are as well.

I think that this new Loopt Device is a very smart idea, but there is always a chance that someone could hack into it, containing your personal information.

Liver pool high school students have been disobeying the schools rules on laptops. That plus the surplus of broken laptops, has caused the Liverpool high school to ban laptops. During tests and quizzes the students have used their laptops to email test answers or look them up online. Many schools and laptop experts have said that the laptops do not affect the level of student achievement. The laptops neither decrease or increase the average grade of the students. However some parents are saying that the laptops are beginning to hinder their children’s grades. Where as the laptops might have been useful five years ago, now people are beginning to feel that they are beginning to be a nuisance. As a result many High schools are getting rid of all their laptops. May 4, 2007 Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops By Winnie Hu Summary by Zeke B

Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience By DAVID POGUE Source: New York Times Summary by Michael Emmerich

OX, a laptop that’s made for kids in third world countries, is coming out in November and is the new “technological breakthrough” of the century. MIT are making this kind of computer based on the conditions of very poor countries that these computers will be given to. The OX is a silent, fanless laptop that is spillproof, rainproof, dustproof, drop-proof, and has many other features that prove to be helpful and entertaining. I believe that this would be helpful for the kids around the world but I still think that it isn’t necessarily needed and that the money given from people who buy a laptop for the kids in third world countries should be used for food and shelter instead of entertainment, but the idea of universal connection with not only internet but a more complex webbing of the computers themselves is very helpful and effective so that all people can stay connected to each other.