News Report #3- "Blackberry PlayBook Hardware Upclose"

Research in motion had the first showing of the playbook today for people to observe. The display of the device is 7-inches and will have a 1 GHz processer. The amount of memory that is going to come with the device has yet to be determined, but many think it will come in a 16 GB or 32 GB models. The playbook also has a built in camera for taking pictures, and also has the capability to link to a person’s blackberry via Bluetooth; this will allow the passing of contacts and calendars. The writer of the article says that this could help RIM in the aspect of current blackberry users not happy with the device that they already own; particularly cell phones. The playbook is also compatible with Wi-Fi and also has an interactive touch screen display. It is also a bit smaller than the Ipad and they hope that this will be a niche in the market and allow them to sale the product successfully. They hope to be rivaling the Apple Inc. Ipad in the near future.

I believe that this is a good motion for Research in Motion to go with their company. The stock of RIM is currently in a state of a downtrend and this could be what the company needs to break the trend. I think this would also be good for all the people out there that have a blackberry because it would allow them to link the phone with the playbook and to use them interchangeably with the software already installed on the Playbook. This is a really interesting device and I would like to see how it works with the Bluetooth linking, and to see if it is going to rival the Ipad for market share.

Selleck, Evan. "Blackberry PlayBook Hardware Upclose." Slash Gear. 27 Sept. 2010. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. http://www.slashgear.com/blackberry-playbook-hardware-upclose-27104651/.

News Report #2-"YouTube Live Streams Live"

In this article it is talking about how YouTube is going to be trying out a new program which would allow people to stream live shows from YouTube’s site. The minimum requirements to use this feature would be for people to have a webcam or and external USB camera which most people have these days with the development of webcams in most new computers. This new feature takes all the things that YouTube knows, which is known as “demand video”; and could make them a powerful force in the live internet video aspect of the internet. If YouTube is able to make this live video feature work it could collaborate with giants like Apple, Google, and other mobile device developers that have the capability to stream live video. This video is now being tested in collaboration with Google TV, and some experts believe that the new video features from YouTube could take away from Time Warner and Comcast Cable companies. This is an interesting new idea from YouTube and could really boost their customer base.

I think that this would be an awesome thing for YouTube to accomplish. I have to work a lot on the weekends, and I go to ESPN.com to watch the NFL games on Sunday’s. When you are on the ESPN.com site it has a football field with directional arrows to tell you the direction the ball is moving, and it also gives you a subscript of what was happening on a certain play in the game. If YouTube is able to produce such a service to help stream live video to a mobile device, like and iPod or iPad it would make YouTube very competitive to other cable companies. This would make life so much easier for people that have to work, although this could make people become so much more dependent on their mobile device. I think in the end though that this would be a great development for YouTube and would love to see it on one of my mobile devices in the future.

Sullivan, Laurie. "YouTube Live Streams Live." MediaPost News. 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 14 Sept. 2010. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Article&art_aid=135649.

Reading Respone #2- "Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?"

In the reading about Wikipedia it is talking about how big the web based encyclopedia is becoming and how more and more people are not posting new information. The article starts out by talking about how up until 2007 there were people posting about 2,200 new articles every day. In the 2007 though the growth of Wikipedia had flat lined. The article goes on to talk about how websites have limits to the amount of information that continues to be posted; they say that the exponential growth stops at a certain point in time. They call the phenomenon crowdsourcing. The people that are still posting information on Wikipedia are mainly trying to correct errors, and doing other types of editing tasks for the current information on Wikipedia. The people that run wiki are trying to find ways to get better information, more accurate information, and to be fair to the people that are making edit’s to the online encyclopedia. There is so much information already on the Wikipedia site, so ultimately how much more will be put onto the encyclopedia? We don’t really know and some people believe that Wikipedia will no longer be around in five year to ten years. They think that the site will continue to lose peoples interest and ultimately go to the website graveyard.

I think that Wikipedia is an awesome site to have at our disposal. There is so much information in the online encyclopedia that has all been published by some volunteer. Though Wikipedia has gotten so large in a short period of time, and not that many people trust the information that comes off the site, I believe that it is something that makes searching for information better. We you go to Wikipedia and you type in some random fact or something completely out of the blue; you will usually get some information about the entry. I also believe that Wikipedia will continue to slow, because there is so much information already on the encyclopedia that you couldn’t feasibly put 2,200 new articles every day. In conclusion I think that Wikipedia is a very useful resource and that it will be around for many years to come.