Walmart Vs. Linux

These two fils show tep very differnt companies that have alot more in common than you think. Although they both run very differently, both very helpful to the everyday consumer in America. Linux uses very open systems with their employees. These is no need for passwords or security measures, and these seems to be very open communities. The Heirarchy of power is very low in that company as well, show in the comment made by the one worker, when he let the officials know that their attempt at passwords was a failure. In another company, it is very unlikely for a worker to address the problems of the company to the boss, or higher power than themselves, for fear of being fired. In this company however, there seems to be little importance put on rank and more or the whole of the company. This company doesn not even care about money, as they push for an open market. Their cause for existing is simply to make the computer world, a better, more userfriendly place. Unlike MIcrosoft, they do not care if people can access their records, they in fact want that. They want people to be able to make their own changes in they software and make it more suitable for their own personal lives. This is best illustrated on their site linux.org, where they call themselves not-for-profit group of users whose goal is to centralize and organize communication between Linux developers and users alike. Their stong desire to promote free open source doccumentaion is also apparant on the site, redhat.com, where they say they are the providers for the open source technology.
Walmart however only desires to make money. Their savvy buisness sence and use of technology has even begun to force other buisnesses over seas, for they can't afford to sell on Walmart's prices. Nevertheless, Walmart has changed the way of buisness and made the distributer the one in cocntrol, not the manufacutrer. Inmany ways this is what makess the two comanies similar. Although walmart is in it for the money instead of the good of the people, but companies has made the world more friendly for the condumer. Just as Linux made the consumer be able to control the products of the manufacturer, Walmart has managed to be in control of the prices of the items comming into them from manufacureres, and ultimately put the consumer in the driver seat, giving them the opportunity to boycotting the other overpriced stores. Both of these companies strive to find a way to overrule companies large price, and get the consumer their items for a normal, affordable price.
Two people in the class that had a very good adaptaion of these two shows are Lania and Chris.

The Long Tail

The long tail is a statistical model used to help buisnesses grow in wealth and sucess. The long tail is basically a feature of statistical distributions, also refferred to as, Zipf, Power-laws, or Pareto distributions. The basic ideaology of this model is that most of the company's buisness comes from a large variety of objects, all of which sell little, or moderatly. The topics of high interest, which sell in great abundance, although are profitable, are not what keep the company alive. What keeps the company running is selling items of high breth, but low depth. These every day occasional sales, keep the money flowwing in for the company, even when there isn't a big release of a popular topic.
For instance, at a CD store. When Brittney Spear's new CD drops, there is a large outpooring for that cd, as hundreads of copies are sold in that one day. Nevertheless, if those were the only sales that the store was making, the store would go bankrupt before Spear's next release. The cd's of unpopular groups, or catagories however, may only sell one a day, perhapd because they are slowly beibg discovered, or perhaps, becuase their fan base is far in few, but whatever the reason, those slow constant sales of the other thousands of CD's the store carries is what brings in the largest monetary sales.
One fo the leading sites that runs primarily on the long tail is amazon.com. This site, unlike your every day cd store, which can only hold a certian amont of CD's, is virtually the loaction of every group, genre, and song you could ever want. THerefor this model is of particular interest to them. They will have the undergroud band's cd that you can't find anywhere, and they will have that Opera CD that you just can't seem to locate. People know this, so they go straight to Amazon. The same is also true at netflix.com, as they also carry those hard to find movies that, although may not be the hottest item at the time, are a constant desire on a smaller scale, but who's appeal last for years.
Two other classmates whos definintion of the long tail is also very effective is Chris and Jessica.

Folksonomy

A Folksonomy is a way to use keywords to organize a site. It is an means of forming informal social catagories, tagging stuff freeform, so to speak. Folsonomies allow people to take control of how their sites are organized and how they come up in searches. For instance, people can tag their site, so that when one puts that tag into a search engine, their site will come up. Folksonomies give people the control to have their site properly lableled. This can in some ways take over the job of a librarian. As librarians list books in a library, not on words that the text contains, but on the topic that they are discussing, and in many ways this is what folksonomies allow. The writer of the site acts as the librarian as they can promote their site for it's content rather than its wording.
Another sites which goes further in depth about folkononies is Jots & Sketches. This site discusses both the good and the bad side of Folksonomies, as it compares it to sites such as Goggle and Yahoo. Corante is another site that go in depth about folksonomies.
Two classmates that have a very good take on Folksonomies are, Matina and Joy.

Chapter 3

I think that one problem this author has is pulling the reader in from the begginging. He tends to have an opening that seems to drag and has little to do with the topic the reader originally had the interest in reading about. For instance in this chapter, the author begins by telling a charming tale of pottery making when he was a child. His main point in raccounting this story is to inform his audience how much people desire to create and do something new. This is a point that can very easily be tied into the internet and management, however, by the time you get there you are already bored and rather lost. He himself, when finally gets to his point, even makes reference to the fact that the audience would be asking why were they reading this information. Another person in this class who also felt this section went on too long was Julia.
Nevertheless, when he does finally get on topic, he continues to explain that people who making pottery take great pride in the work that they produce with their hands. He draws a tie between this and the buisness world, by stating how people in the industry take such great pride in the details of their work, for instance a lawyer's pride in a case he won due to the minute details that he discovered and made known. He makes a good point that craftsmen in both the buisness world and in the pottery world want the same thing, to have their voices heard.
From here he beautifully ties in the web. He explains how each web page is like that piece of scultupre. Each had a creator, whom took great pride in it and heald a great desire for the piece to exist. The same love and dedication goes into each work. I also liked how he pointed out that with the web, the lack of sensorship enables the direct, unaltered thoughts to go right from the thinker to the reader, therefor truly giving voice to the world. This promotes people to go onto the web and give their thoughts, for they know they will not be chopped and altered, as they may be on television, but will rather be their entire, whole-hearted thoughts. Another person in the class who felt that he made very good points in this chapter was Elena.

The Internet Censorship Website further emphisises just how much freedom we have on the internet. Another place that is promoting freedom of speech on the web is the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Chapter 2

The first paragraph of this chapter was very good. It had a hook that forced people to think. What is the real purpose of the internet? It is imposible in todays society to imagine life without the internet, but what is the internets real purpose.
This was followed by a few great paragraphs which discessed how even though we don't really know what the internet's purpose is, we can't live without it. We push it, we promote it, we advertise it and many spend a good portion of the day on it. He then ends this section by saying that the main purpose for the internet is voice. Then it really becomes clear that voice is what people really want from the internet. That connection between people from all over the world, people we have never even met, we suddenly are connected to. It is that voice that we all desire so strongly.
Next he discusses how another strong purpose for the internet is management. The internet's invention has created a means for everyone to organize themselves using the littlest possible effort. Bills can automatically be payed monthly with no effort of your own. You can submit work or atend a buisness conferance without even leaving your bed. People can now even attend college right from their own homes. It has gotten to the point that people don't even have to leave their houses to go grocery shopping, you simply efficiently type what you want and have it delivered to your home. The internet has become a necesity for people. The new generation of people can't even manage to organize a few papers without the aid of a computer. It is that organizationaly ease, in a lifestyle that is so complex that people adore so much in the internet.
Nevertheless, after all of these strong points that the author makes, he seems to loose his audience in the next few sections. He begins to talk about the buisness world and how people must act in that enviornment. He devotes a large section of the chapter to this topic, but it is completely irrelavent. It talks about how all personaly topics should not be discussed in the buisness field and how one should completely separate their personal and buisness lives. Now this makes perfect sence, and he eventually explains it's relation to the internet, nevertheless, he devotes too much time on this topic and often repeats himself and for little effect on the audience.
When he finally gets back on topic, he is very powerful, he explains that although the internet has many vast purposes, the main one in the voice that people find it it. He discusses how homepages are so popular because it gives them a venue to display themselves, their ideas, their thought and their likes, unsensored and real. This is when he finally explains what the previous sections had to do with the internet. As the buisness stiffles a person, the internet opens their lives to the whole world to take view of. Now this new communication can be both good and bad. This Internet Presentation shows the good points of this new found communication. Where on the otherhand, Crisis Communication represents the problems that may arrise from this openness.
I agreed with what Julia said about how the reason people seemed to loose their voice is because of social norms and the pressure that comes from society. I think that in today's time people care too much about what others think and loose what they really what in essesnce. Nevertheless, I don't know that the internet will solce that problem. The majority of people are still to affraid to say anything too radical or strayed from the consensus because of fear of rejection. Nevertheless, the internet will help these issues. As Chris points out, due to the large variety of topics displayed on the internet, one can easily find the group in which shares their feelings and idea, one where they can have both, themselves and society.

Chapter 1

The Beginning of Chapter One of The Cluetrain Manifesto, although it made excellent points, I felt had little relevance to the rest of the chapter and the Internet for that matter. Nevertheless, I think that he was very correct in his speaking. He discusses the brutality and reality of every day life, the ups, the downs, the losses and how common and everyday these horrific events have become. Sadly in today's world, we hear on the news that someone was horribly killed somewhere and we are so used to it that we are almost programmed to brush it off, as..."another news story." When you really think about that that is really pathetic. People spend their whole lives worrying about what everyone thinks of them, how they are perceived by others. They would worry about what others thought of them much less is they realized how seldom people do think of them. People in today's culture spend much too much time worrying over petty details of life, instead of just living it. Instead of spending your life do what others want you to do, do what you want you to do; otherwise you will never truly be happy. That is basically what the author is saying in his opening.
Nevertheless, I would have to agree with Julia that this opening is completely bogus when put in context with the topic. Nevertheless, I do also agree with Danielle that this author makes absoloutly marvolous points about the buisness world of marketing and advertising.
I also found the section about advertising very interesting. Advertisers today try to "solve" people's problems with a product. If you are unhappy with your looks, use this face cream, or diet pill, or variety of beauty items that do little but take your money and subconsciously make you believe they are working. But the worst part of this whole thing is that they succeed. The American public falls right into their spells and buys every cream and exercise machine known to man in hopes of making them "happier." In reality, if they want to be happier, they should just stop. Stop arguing, stop fighting, stop trying to beat out everyone around you and strive as the ultimate. Just be.
I found that asside from the complete disconnect between the opening and the body of the text, the actually chapter was very informative. The author went on to discuss the origins off the internet. I found it interesting to hear what he had to say about the early stages of the interenet, since as he says he was one of the first to use the internet. I found it astonishing to find out that no one could possibly concieve how big the internet would become. It is now hard to imagine that the possibilities could not even be forseen as to be the meca of information, communication and sales that we know of it today. This feeling is also seen in the article from US News, where they discuss the internet in it's earliest form, and how it's magnitude was never imagined. To go further back into the history of the internet, the site, Internet History takes the internet back to its very root with the sattalite sputnick.

Unmade in America

I feel that the article, Unmade in America: the true cost of a global assembly line, hit upon some very good points. The autor discussed the fact that politicians and buisness heads alike, when put in the pulbic eye, puts on a dissaproving, discusted face, nevertheless, as the storm passes, the matter is left alone, because it is beneficial in some way to them. People in today's world do what helps themselves, no matter what achieving that may entale.

I found particularly interesting the line, "But then this was not the first time our elected representatives had publicly chastised one of their children for smashing the car, knowing full well that they themselves had liquored the kid up beforehand and slipped him the keys." Many officials and politicians, bend and change the rules as it suits them. The presidential inauguration cost millions of dollars, as can clearly be seen on the inaguration official website. All of the money for the inaguration of which was donated by big companies, who in turn expect to have the upper hand in Washington. Now, although bribery is defined as "the practice of offering a professional money or other favours in order to circumvent ethics in a variety of professions. It is a form of corruption and is generally illegal, or at least cause for penalties from professional organisations" as stated by wikipedia. This situation is beneficial to both the president and the companies, so it is called lobbying. Nevertheless, if that is done among every day people, both parties would be prosecuted for recieving and making bribes.

In Cheryl's blog, much is mentioned about how countries do only what is good for themselves. Also in Jessica's blog, she makes good point about how America as a country wants maximum profits with the lowest costs. WHich in turn proves how this country want sonly to do good for themselves.

classmates

While reading the other blogs, I found that Logan also likes to shop on E-bay.


I also found out that Stephanie goes to Imdb.com alot.


I also saw that Jessica likes the show Arrested Development.