Last Reflection

Through MIDS 301, and specifically this blogging project, I was given the opportunity to explore new advances in information technology. I chose Web 2.0 as the focus of my blog because this shift in internet services has influenced many aspects of my life.

Prior to college, my boarding school dorms had had Ethernet connection, and the entire campus had wireless connection. Each of my classes required labs, reports, or papers that required internet access. I think it was around my sophomore year of high school that I first realized the scope of the internet. Through my classmates, I discovered such sites as MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, Xanga, music sharing programs, and music sharing sites such as Yousendit. While I was years behind the user interactive Web revolution, I quickly became an interactive internet user—blogging, uploading, and social networking. While many of the interactive services that I discovered were for entertainment purposes, other programs and sites such as Flikr and Hello allowed me to chat (either text or via webcam), share videos and pictures with my family members at our own convenience.

As a college sophomore, the importance of the internet has never been more apparent. As a student, especially a Case student, the internet and Web 2.0 applications are an integral part of my life. From Blackboard, collaborating on projects with Google documents, chatting on AIM with prospective students, touring a virtual Case in the game Second Life, the internet is how things get done these days.

Going into MIDS, I felt rather confounded and confused compared to many of my classmates who had strong backgrounds in information technology. Every lecture was more or less new material for me. So, in choosing a topic to blog on, I wanted to learn about new advances but also have the opportunity to share what I know with the instructor and my classmates. A large majority of my posts were in tandem with the material we talked about in class. Also, many of posts lead me to discover innovative web sites that were creative, engaging, technologically savvy, and time saving. I am very satisfied with this aspect of my blogging experience; I think I chose a subject that not only allowed me to become internet savvy and up-to-date, it also helped me realize the ever evolving state and of the internet; every week, I discovered new Web 2.0 sites, from the cool, the cute, the useful, to the pointless. Moreover, the scope of Web 2.0 is enlarging week by week, as more and more people decide to participate in this social revolution.

The writing experience was also rather enlightening. While I have a music blog dedicated to new artists I discover, I put little effort into making and scripting new posts. The last time I actually blogged for an audience was during high school, when all of my friends had Xanga’s and amassing new posts, eprops, and new comments was the “in” thing. Blogging for a grade was definitely very different; I expected to update weekly with relevant content, images, and video. At first I thought it would be difficult to write 500-700 words, but towards the end of my blogging experience, I often found it hard to restrict myself to that limit. Writing about subjects covered in class also helped me absorb the class material faster; again since many of the class topics were new to me, the blog allowed me to explore new facets of the topics while remembering what we covered in class.

Also, maintaining a blog helped me realize the connected functionality (yet another aspect of Web 2.0) of many websites. Prior to this project, I had no idea how accommodating blogger was to YouTube and Last.fm, etc. Moreover, I learned some basic html code that allowed me to manipulate the font, pictures, and video that would not format correctly. Also, it amazed me to see how fast the internet operates; within seconds of publishing a blog post, I was able to google the topic and see my blog post in the results. While these newly discovered aspects make me sound quite naïve and cave women like, I truly believe that my blog helped me understand how Web 2.0 has revolutionized the internet and the way people interact.

Cyworld: The Ultimate Social Networking Site

In America, social networking sites started off as message boards and blogs, progressing to complex networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Youtube. The most popular of these sites integrate video, audio, and text, while offering interactive and user-uploaded content. MySpace is ranked by Alexa Internet( an internet information provider) and Reuters, as the third most popular website in the United States holding 80% of all social networking site visits; however, it's all encompassing features are now being put to the test by a newly arrived rival, Cyworld. While MySpace has an impressive dominance in the United States, Cyworld can boast that 40% of South Korea's population are users, and 95% of people in their 20s use it regularly.

Cyworld is a Korean networking site owned by SK Group, a huge conglomerate selling items from toothpaste to gasoline. Like MySpace, Cyworld focuses on giving each member a personal space, but in a more literal sense. Each user creates a cute mini-me avatar with his or her own room that can be decorated as they see fit. Users can then visit their friends' rooms and see the friend's decoration tastes. Registration is free, but any decorations to their personal space costs money; while this may seem inane to American consumers, Asian pop culture is very much devoted to cutesy accouterments. In addition to mini room furinishings, users have the option to temporarily purchase songs, backgrounds, fonts, and banners, etc. for their virtual room.


Before we get into the nitty-gritty of Cyworld's features, the following is a short introductory clip straight from the source:




For its success, Cyworld has won several awards including the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award by the University of Pennsylvania business school, for its society-wide transformation of interpersonal interaction. Unlike MySpace and Facebook which supports their services by advertising, Cyworld generates its own revenue by selling virtual "acorns" at a conversion rate of 10 cents per acorn. These acorns are the only currency that can be used to buy a member's favorite background, couch, banners, songs etc. This allows Cyworld to be less dependent on advertisers telling them what to do, and puts more money back into its own pockets. As of 2005 SK Communications generates daily revenue of around $300,000. Today the number is undoubtedly higher.


Like many networking sites, Cyworld offers the following features: friend relationships, community groups, blog-like service, photo galleries and video uploads.

However the have also developed unique services that set them apart from their competitors: Mini-hompy's, virtual money called dotori or "acorns", integrated NateOnIM service, a baby section for mothers, and virtual rooms. In essence it brings networking to the next level, similar to bringing Sims (from the bestselling game, the Sims) online. The buying and refilling virtual money is shown in the below image:

Similar to MySpace and Facebook, big corporations have jumped on the bandwagon, setting up their own sites or profiles to generate buzz for product launches and reach consumers online. Celebrities, authors, bands, and even politicians now have their own Mini-Hompy's, to make them more accessible to the youthful net generation. Having conquered Korea, they have expanded to Japan, China, Taiwan, and now, finally the United States. The US cyworld is their first foray out of Asia, so to fit with the culture, SK Communications hired firms, Native Instinct and Cuban Council to redesign and add features in an attempt to appeal to Americans.

Below is a typical Korean user's Mini-Hompy. As you can see it looks very much like a diary, with different sections that one can "flip" to. Unlike most MySpace profiles, it has a clean child-like cute look.

Please click on the pictures to see them in their original size:

Here's a view of a user's mini room from Cyworld China. Another reason for Cyworld's popularity is that instead of having to deal with HTML or anything else to create a personal look, one just has to buy cool items. You can also view the user's friends hanging out and using his furnishing's.

There are a few obstacles to success, like the unfamiliar payment structure, but given the popularity of other micro-payment structures in games like Second Life, X-Box Live and Wii Virtual Console, we might see another player in the field.

Also, it is interesting to note that other Asian countries are now catching on to social networking frenzy. In Japan, many teenagers use Mixi, a large networking site committed to "community entertainment," or meeting people with similar interests. Also, WRETCH photo ablums, and Msn Space are wildly popular among the Chinese population. While these large Asian networking services are expanding, they have yet to capture the fervor of an entire generation as Cyworld has.

References and Related Links

Report from www.insidecyworld.com

Net Neutrality: Do websites have to pay up to show up?

If in a couple years, you find that accessing this blog, and others like might be a bit slower in comparison to big sites like ESPN, then the opponents of net neutrality might have scored a victory.

But let’s back up for a second here. First, whoever came up with the term really should have given it some more thought. A longer phrase with more meaning in it is better than a two word one that conveys almost nothing to the average person. What should the net be neutral of? More criticism on the name can be found here from Arianna Huffington. It also sounds awfully dull, which is a shame, because it is an issue that affects everyone who uses the internet in one way or another. On what other issue can you find the liberal site MoveOn.org, the conservative Christian Coalition, and the Gun Owners of America allied together? Seriously.

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a rundown of net neutrality. Right now, all the web sites in the world can be accessed on an equal basis (at least here in America). The opponents of net neutrality, which include the major telecom companies that provide the pipes that connect you to the Internet, want to start charging websites for priority access creating a tiered Internet. On the one hand, you’ll have the big companies that can afford to pay the fees and thus have priority, and on the other, the huge number of little-guy websites; blogs, small e-commerce sites, fan sites, etc.

This could have profound repercussions for Web 2.0. A lot of sites demand fast connections and uploading. A site like YouTube wouldn’t be popular if the navigation was unbearably slow. In the quest to be of more value to the user, sites have been pushing the envelope on features, as broadband connections have become more pervasive. Creating arbitrary classes of websites, means innovative new features could slow to a crawl. Take Facebook for example, in just the past year it has changed a lot, adding the ability to share videos and upload photo albums; things that require fast uploads and access. A lot of the best sites have also been founded by just one person or a small team with a cool idea. If you limit the access to small sites, you’re basically limiting creativity and the growth of these sites. For one CEO's personal story, watch this PBS produced episode from the series NOW. Part 1. Part 2.

This is why the lack of unified response from Web 2.0 sites is disheartening. It would be in their best interest to talk about it and educate the public. Maybe there is no response because they don't feel the danger just yet, or maybe they may even want to be bought out by one of companies not in support of net neutrality, so they don't want to rock the boat. Whatever the case, managers of sites are not leveraging the attention of their many users to its potential.

Thankfully, as a stipulation of AT&T's recent merger with BellSouth, the FCC ruled that it must not "offer any service that 'privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet' transmitted over its broadband service," for at least two years.

If you want to help, sign the online petition at Savetheinternet.com and call your local congressperson to support legislation preventing service providers from controlling the Internet. Don't be fooled by group Hands off the Internet, which is a front for big corporations against net neutrality. Similar to the Smoke Less Ohio referendum last year, which sounded like it was for controlling smoking, but was actually funded by R.J. Reynolds (one of the top five tobacco companies in the world). Hands of the Internet sounds like it's all for freedom by being against government intervention of the Web. However the government intervention they are against is actually pro-net neutrality legislation.

Finally, if you still don't take my word for it, then how about a ninja's?

References and Related Links

For more information (pro and con) on Net Neutrality, here are a few excellent articles:

New York Times Opinion Article: Keeping a Democratic Web
NYT: Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End
New York Times: Congress to Take Up Net’s Future
New York Times Opinion Article: Protecting Internet Democracy
The Register: Father of internet warns against Net Neutrality

The Social Music 2.0 Revolution ♪

Since the focus of this blog is Web 2.0, I thought it would be fitting to look into a variety of innovative and popular social networking sites. As we discussed in class, for those who believe in the concept of Web 2.0, the difference between new sites and past sites is characterized by user generated content, better user-service integration, and networking elements. A real physical example of the qualities ascribed to Web 2.0 are shown in this humorous video. As we can see just like object have multiple tags, (such as bread being labeled as brown and crispy), images, videos, music, are now being subject to the same by any user on Web 2.o sites.



Unfortunately, it would take tens of thousands of words of text to describe even a small segment of the community of Web 2.0 sites. So I've decided to focus on music sites, after all almost everybody has an iPod or other MP3 player, and even though record sales are down, interest in music seems to be up. The following sites epitomize the spirit of Web 2.0 in the realm of music:


Tagging (essential to Web 2.0, as seen in the above clip) music and connecting listeners with similar taste has always been at the heart online musical social revolution. Moreover, these sites combine aspects of web-based radio, desktop music programs (such as iTunes, WinAmp, and Jukebox), and messaging boards. These sites facilitates exploring unknown artists, broadening musical tastes, and making worldwide friends with similar taste.


Last.fm, founded by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones, is one of the more popular social music sites; and is one that I have been using personally for almost two years. At that time I joined (Audioscrobbler, it merged with Last.fm in August of 2005), Last.fm was a plugin that recorded/scrobbled the tracks that played on your desktop music program to the website. These tracks were then created into weekly and monthly charts tracking the change in your musical preferences; these charts in allowed the website to create a network of users with similar taste. Now, Last.fm has expanded its services to allow for streaming of music and your personal radio station, forum boards, tagging, groups, better artist recommendations based on your taste, integration with Amazon purchasing services, chart posting to MySpace and Livejournal, and even notifications of concerts around your area. More importantly, Last.fm now offers the same features as desktop applications, online.

Pictures courtesy of Lastfm.com

Although it is an American site, there truly are no borders on the net as we can see from the following video clip. Last.fm has become popular enough to generate even international interest as seen in the following interview.





As their mission statement says,

"Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler music engine. More than ten million times a day, Last.fm users "scrobble" their tracks to our servers, helping to collectively build the world's largest social music platform.

Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalized recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more. It's never been this easy to share your taste and discover new music. Welcome to the social music revolution."


For those of you who are curious, here is a chart of my last played tracks. Courtesy of Last.fm of course.

: The service that answers the question "Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?"

You simply enter the name of a song or an artist that you like, and the service automatically responds by streaming songs that are supposed to be musically similar. To improve the service by adding a human touch, the user can provide feedback on the chosen song, either approval or disapproval. Over 400 musical qualities are taken into account when the service chooses the next song, pretty neat.


: What would happen if Digg had a music obsessed kid.

Anyone can upload tracks, and then the Jigg community votes, or "Jiggs" the ones that they like. Those votes influence the music that becomes popular and is displayed. Users can also comment on each song, and the site like all other ones, provides recommendations. It's not so popular now, but in six months or a year, who knows.


: The standard social networking site, remixed.

Every user creates their own personal blog page, a "Mog," based on the songs and artists that they listen to. You can browse Mogs and leave comments, make friends, communicate with others, check out events they're going to, and get (once again) song and artist recommendations.

Musicovery: Music Genre Visualization & Confusion

While using Digg to write a previous blog post, I happened to stumble upon a thread about Musicovery, an European interactive webRadio, which received rave reviews from many online members. It is advertised as a free lo-fi (hi-fi users must pay) radio that plays songs based on time period, mood, and genre.

As we discussed in class, this especially fits in with Web 2.0. Similar to how computer graphics went from 2-D to 3-D, the musical experience has gained another dimension. As we also mentioned, website aesthetics have a lot to do with the design and usability. After playing around with Musicovery for a while, I realized that although it made a pleasing initial visual impression, the functionality is not as far along as the style.

When I first reached the main page, I thought that the the control panel (as seen in the picture of the left) was very uniquely designed and looked very user friendly.

On the main page, there were no additional links to the pages about the company or user information; the only instructions the company offered on the player was: "to start the radio click somewhere on the matrix or to get a radio from the genre only click the coloured matrix." While these instructions in context with the radio interface look simple, after playing around with Musicovery for a about 10 or 20 minutes, I realized that this player vacillated between innovation design and slightly bad user-bility (no wonder it's still in beta!).

The Main Idea
Before choosing any music, users must first chose whether they would like to listen to hits or non-hits, and then pick a year (or all years) they would like to hear music from (it spans from around 1950-present). Then, users have one of two options; they can either click on the matrix or pick music by genre. After this selection, users will be able to pick from clips on a song chain.


Matrix
For users who clicked on the Matrix (the gray box), they can pick between dance and non-dance music. This seems like a limited choice for me, but since it is an European station and they are still in beta, they might have more options later. After this first choice, users can click anywhere on the matrix. The cornerstones of the matrix are dark, energetic, positive, and calm moods. Once users click this, the signature web of different colored clusters of songs pop up.

Genre
For users who would rather pick by genre, they can also choose between the four states for each genre. Once they click on the genre name, a smaller mood matrix show up; after selecting the desired state/emotion, the user can see on the larger matrix the "location (where in the four cornerstones their pick lies)" of their selection. After this, the signature web of similar colored cluster of songs will appear.


The Cluster Chain of Songs
For many users, the web of songs, is the attraction of Musicovery; however, while this layout may seem unique and quite attractive at first, the design and navigation become overwhelming very quickly. It took me an hour of clicking around to find out for myself how the chain operates since there was no FAQ to guide me.

After the user makes the selections mentioned above, Musicovery will automatically generate a chain of music according the position on the above matrix/chart. If a user wants to skip to the next song on the trail, then she can click on the splotch. Users can preview a specific track on the chart by directly clicking on the splotch, forgoing other songs. If they like the song, they have the option of buying it on iTunes or Amazon. On the chains of songs, each song is color coded by the genre specified on the player. If one ignores the matrix, and clicks on only the genre bar, then only the music from that particular genre, indicated by the same color splotches, will be played. While this function is helpful, it can become taxing on the eyes as shown the below image.

Good Concept vs. Overwhelming Design
Overall, Musicovery is an innovative visual twist on Pandora, but users must give up the option to choosing similar artists to see a visual mood coded representation of their musical tastes. As a first time user, I found it slightly unnerving that my splotch of music or surrounding splotches would disappear or realign to the center when I clicked on it. Moreover, as a eclectic listener I found that that: the genres, moods, and time periods were often misaligned and the variety was very small and as I selected more and more artists and songs in different genres, the cluster of songs became a dizzying blob of bright colors.

As we discussed in class, web designs with overwhelming colors are often difficult for users to appreciate. While Musicovery's design is very hip and modern, the combination of swinging clusters, new bursts of colorful clusters, and music at the same thing was a little too much over the top.

After my first experience with Musicovery, I have pinpointed some areas that this creative radio player could improve on both in structure and user interface/design:

Structure:
01. Add a volume bar
02. Add more variety of songs
03. Allow users to save a map of their old clusters
04. Change the alignment of the player to a vertical bar at the top of the screen

User Interface/Design:
01. Reconsider the color spectrum for the genres
02. Stabilize the movement of clusters and appearance of new clusters
03. Shrink the size of the song clusters

Lastly: a comprehensive view of this player:

References and Related Links

Another Users Opinion

Web 2.0 = Exploitation of Labor?

As they say, money makes the world go round. With the focus on Web 2.0 being mostly free, open, user-created content, the traditional money making model for companies is either going out the window or being substantially retooled.

Sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Wikipedia are popular because they allow communities of people to put up their own user generated content and access other users' content for free. These websites represent themselves as giving away their knowledge and data for free to the public. What bothers some people is that these websites support themselves by using the products of the communities’ work to draw net surfers to their sites, and then making money from that attention through advertising. As one blogger described it, Web 2.0 sites are making money by exploiting the free labor of their users.

Because users are involved in making the end product, along with tools provided by web applications, I can understand how much they feel invested in it. But I think that the previous opinion is an unfair assessment. Without the applications that websites provide there would be no way for content to be generated. How much is the facilitation and help worth to the users? Enough that the monetary support the site receives is rightfully gained.

Some people may give an analogy to a toolmaker making the power tools to build a chair. The company provides the tools, but the user owns the chair. But trying to apply that analogy to the Web 2.0 paradigm isn’t valid because of certain flaws. For one thing, a tool company sells the tools to the customer. It also doesn’t give instructions on how to make a chair, or let you see chairs that other people made. Once your creation is made it doesn’t store a copy of the chair for you or let you show it off to the entire world. Every step of the way, websites provide more value for the user.

As we talked about in class, the ethical use of information is a looming issue for almost all websites; try to find a large website without a privacy policy. The real problem for people, I figure, is the selling of personal information as a means for sites to make money. Sometimes it is hard to disentangle information from content. MySpace’s content is almost all personal information: age, sex, location, friends, favorite bands, movies, etc. MySpace is an obvious example, but less obvious sites can cash in on personal information too.

The community-based news popularity website, Digg, allows for users to submit and then vote for their favorite website or news. The website already gathers information on what you like, what your friends like, all the stories that you’ve submitted, how other people react to your posts, and your comments on other peoples posts. Without too much effort, the creators could give this information to interested parties. Of course you don’t have to submit information like a real name of an address; but their advertisers might, through the use of cookies, be able to link a user to an email address among other things. In its privacy policy the management says that it won’t sell or lend information but it may share it in certain instances. One instance is

Business Transfers:
In some cases, we may choose to buy or sell assets. In these types of transactions, user information is typically one of the business assets that is transferred. Moreover, if Digg, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred.

Yahoo wasn't willing to pay $900 million for Facebook just to have access to students' spring break albums, it wanted to leverage Facebook's user information with the power of a large communications, commerce and media company. Of course the company that has the greatest ambition is Google. Google has unequivocally said that it wants to store all the worlds’ information, including personal information. They have been good at keeping to their corporate motto, “Do no evil,” but for how long? Over time Google may compromise and get further away from the original intentions of the founders.

References and Resources

How Ethical is the new Web 2.0 business model?

Samy is my hero: New Web, New Flaws

Any readers out there with a MySpace profile? If you had one, all the way back in October, 2005, you or your friends might remember getting a new addition to your friends list, without any action of your part. Does the phrase “Samy is my hero” ring a bell?

For those of you who haven’t heard, about a year and a half ago, a 19-year-old hacker by the name of Samy created a worm and planted it into his profile. When a MySpace member saw his profile, the code was executed and automatically added Samy as one of his or her friends. It would then add “but most of all, samy is my hero” if the profile had a list of heroes. The code would then also be added to the unsuspecting person’s profile and the cycle would start all over again.

As Samy himself said, “So if 5 people viewed my profile, that's 5 new friends. If 5 people viewed each of their profiles, that's 25 more new friends. And after that, well, that's when things get difficult. The math, I mean.” With this exponential growth Samy had a million new friends in just 10 hours time.

This prank was relatively harmless, all Samy wanted to do was get some fame and a few more friends. But the same technique could be used for malicious purposes. For example, another worm last summer affected people with Yahoo mail. Unlike usual e-mail worms, this one spreads without the user ever opening up an attachment. By just clicking on an e-mail, a JavaScript vulnerability was exploited (the Samy worm also worked by manipulating JavaScript), and e-mails were sent to those on the user’s contact list. The harvested e-mails addresses were also then send to a remote server, maybe so that they could be put on lists to receive spam.

With this entire buzz about Web 2.0, the new venture capital money, the big buyouts, some experts are calling for more focus on security and user protection, over just features and innovation. One web security specialist, Billy Hoffman of SPI Dynamics said “We're continuing to make the same mistakes by putting security last."

Some of this is due to AJAX, the programming technique, not the household cleaner. It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, but that’s not important, what is important is that it focuses on web application speed and uninterrupted user interaction. Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook and MySpace use it. It’s what creates the seamless interaction between the user and the application. But it doesn’t stop there; it also opens up holes for hackers to sneak code through. Because there is a lot more interactions with the browser, there are that many more opportunities. Also a lot of Web 2.0 sites allow anyone to upload content, making the job even easier for hackers.

Another problem is the increased possibility of cross-site scripting flaws, which allows malicious web code to be injected to web pages viewed by other users. This is how the Samy and Yahoo mail worm worked. A hacker could also “poison” XML blocks that go back and forth from server to browser. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg; you can get more examples here.

Suffice to say; as long as there are clever people in the world, there will be more attacks. No system is ever 100% perfect, so hackers and programmers will continue to play their cat and mouse game for years to come. With the social networking component of Web 2.0 being so big, we’ll probably see some more creative security breaches in the vein of Samy in the future. Will we be ready?

References and Related Links

CNET: The Security Risk in Web 2.0

Teen uses worm to boost ratings on MySpace.com