Checks, Balances and Requests
Talk about checks and balances…and Open Government, for that matter.
Google Inc., which has been in the news for quite a few censorship and government scandals recently, has launched an online tool which tracks government requests to remove content or reveal personal information about users. While they aren’t turning down governments for some of these requests, they are making that information publicly available, which is a pretty cool check on government, even if it only shares the numbers and not details about the specific requests. They do, however, list out if requests were fully or partially complied with, whether there was a court order, and what kinds of requests they were, such as “blogger,” “Google Video,” or anything else under the sun really. Continue Reading…
Duh. As soon as my older sister got a Facebook account, I was more eager to get my college email than ever before. Screw getting my list of classes or my dorm assignment. I wanted Facebook and back then, the magic key was having a college e-mail. Facebook is the best (or worst) thing that ever happened to college students, stalking, dating, and everything else under the sun these days.
Maybe it’s because we all like wasting our time or we have all become visual people, but YouTube has not only changed the way we spend our hours and define “celebrity,” but also how we socialize and even how we run our democracy. In 2008, both candidates had their own YouTube channels.
From Gmail, Picasa and Youtube (see above) to Google Maps and even Google Android, Google has become one of the biggest movers and shakers of the online world. For me, it has changed the way I check my email, share documents, share pictures, manage my time, search for information, do marketing, check traffic and soon enough, it will even change the way I use my phone (when I get over myself and buy one already).
Am I the only one who remembers using computer software Encyclopedia Britannica for my 5th grade projects? Searching for information and the way we can all contribute to Diderot’s idea of the “Encyclopédie” is one of the most amazing things that happened to us (and especially lazy students) in the past 10 years. Someone even quoted it in an essay at Oxford.
Most people I meet still don’t really “get” Twitter or want to give it a chance. Maybe I wasn’t as excited about it as I was about getting my Facebook account set up, but as I navigated the world of Twitter, I learned that it is a great tool. 140 characters has now become the definition of concise and trending topics has changed the way we think about news and world events. It’s also comforting to know that if I get stuck in a foreign jail as a journalist, I can let my friends know via one word tweet. That could have helped Bridget Jones…
For me, as a journalist, this has changed so much. Citizen journalism has changed my career aspirations, my industry, and even our world’s definition of truth and objectivity. With over 100 millions bloggers out there right now, it’s a tough market. The good stuff? Blogging has also changed the way I can expose my writing, share my ideas and the reason I am writing this right here, right now, using CMS.