Today's Class

Today we had a speaker come to class to discuss search engine optimization. He discussed how some websites are set up to produce certain results from different searches. They can make changes that might not be noticeable to the customer, but optimize the structure in order for easy extraction of the page by search engines. He talked about Google quite frequently which was helpful because I was easy to follow what he was saying by different examples he gave that I see on a daily basis. I'm not quite sure what his job is, but he did cover a lot of difficult information and made it relatable to our class and what we are currently studying.

Wiki: Las Cruces

I have chosen to edit the Wikipedia article about Las Cruces, because I visited there a few weeks ago for spring break and absolutely adored it. The article discusses the highlights of different areas of the city, and highlights the downtown area. They do discuss the farmer's market and churches, but failed to mention anything about the art galleries. These galleries were my favorite part of visiting downtown while I vacationed there, so I thought I would give them some credit. You can check out my edit by going here.

Katie's Blog

Katie chose to write about about John Batelle's new interactive webchats. Personally, I think these are a great idea because they promote ultimate consumer interaction. He is not only organzing these e-chats, but he is making them as personal as possible by drawing from customer recommendation about what they would prefer to discuss. She tells us that people are actively posting ideas, and this engagment alone is positive for Batelle. To read more of what Katie had to say and to get linked to the actual article, click here!

Stiuqxela

Our class is doing an experiment on how to develop the most Google juice from a single, nonsensical word: stiuqxela. We will soon find out who has used stiuqxela the most effectively in their blogs. I have chosen to write a haiku:
stiuqxela is fun
it has three syllabals, right?
stiuqxela, love you.

Crisis Management

Toby's post about crisis management really hit home. The unthinkable events that took place at VT last week left everyone questioning whether or not they could have somehow been prevented by alerting students. In this article, she discusses a new mobile text messaging system, Twitter, that can send out mass text messages for free in a state of emergency. This would definitely be helpful, knowing that every college student I know is addicted to their cell phone. Could this new technology save lives in the future? Check out this article and decide for yourself.

Chimps with rights?

I was browsing Slashdot this morning (my favorite of the required blogs due to it's quirky current news feeds) and I cam across a comical article entitled "Shoulc Chimps Have Human Rights?". This article explains how a Brazillian court has granted a chimp habeas corpus in a recent case and now the same might occur in Austria. Habeas corpus is basically the right to a fair trial and punishment which thus far has only been applied to humans. The article however points out the similarities we share with chimps and states that a group of world leading primatologists feels that they should be treated like humans for this reason, even in the court of law. Now, this might be going a bit too far but who am I to judge? I don't know enough about the mental capacities of chimpanzees. Maybe they should be treated as our equals... we shall soon find out. Read more of the article here!

Roger's Post

My teamate recently posted an interesting article concerning internet curfews. I had never heard of such a thing and I never knew it would be possible. However, in India, colleges are considering this practice to limit the amount of "bad content" on the students' hardrives. Roger was completely against this movement, and even more adverse to it spreading to America. I agree that college students here have different schedules than the average person, and late night research and communication over the internet is our prime time to be engaged. I hope to never see this policy put in act. To read more of what Roger had to say, check out his blog.