Scavenger Hunt

This scavenger hunt has been pretty easy, only a couple questions were hard. A hard one was the financial information on Oracle. The search engine one and the cookie one were really easy, except having to go print the cookie. You should update these papers, since they say 2004 on them, in question 12. Anyway, click here for a really cool website. Ya, I dont see how we are supposed to reach 3 paragraphs just on this topic. Emailing you now! Oh ya, Lukas is my partner for the scavenger hunt.Amazon shopping cart and Camcorder in another shopping cart.

Burn Rate

My topic for my presentation is a book entitled "Burn Rate", by Michael Wolff. Burn Rate is Michael Wolff's story of how he handled the internet boom. The book sounds like it could be interesting, but honestly, I don't expect it to be. I chose it because it was readily available and Prof. Fry recommended it. Thanks for letting me borrow it by the way. I plan to start reading it within the next couple days, because it seems like it might take a long time to read. Anyway, I'm just going to hope it will be able to hold my attention for most of the book.

Community Needs

Most communities, like the one at Exit133, are based upon a common interest of all its members. That is the key component to almost any community. Some communities though, like your family and relatives, you are born into. But for most communities, the most important thing is a shared interest. Another important factor for many communities is leadership, this may be by someone who runs a website (Like Derek and Exit 133), or by a group of people that help to organize what the group does. Overall though, communities vary greatly and so do their needs.

Online Purchasing (Part II): Biggest Purchase

In the other Online Purchasing post I comment on how Ive bought computer parts over the internet, these parts added together and purchased all at once came to somewhere between $400 and $500. This is probably the largest purchase Ive ever made online, but how high would I go? Probably not much more than that. Once you get above the $500 mark you start getting to items that I would have to see in person before I would purchase them, like a car or television set. Although my parents did buy a truck through E-Bay for somewhere around $14,000 a while back. The one thing that I think of that I would be willing to purchase over the internet that would be above $500 is a travel package of some sort, with the plane tickets, hotel reservations and whatever else comes in a travel package. Another thing I MIGHT consider would be a prebuilt computer, but why buy it prebuilt when I can buy the parts and make it myself for half the price.

Services Online

To me, the two most important online services that come to mind is online banking and online billing. Before online banking was around, I didn't even bother with the bank at all, I kept my money on me or at my house. It wasn't worth it to me to drive to the bank and wait in line to take out money or even check how much money I had (Of course this was years ago and I probably didn't even have a car way back then). Now Ill simply check how much money I have, and transfer money between my banking accounts online. To get money I still usually just take money out with my debit card after buying things at the store. I love being able to pay bills online too, not that I really have a lot of bills to pay.

Another really useful service online is being able to look up information. Using Google to look things up saves me countless hours on almost every assignment I have to do that involves research. Even if I have a book for the class that will have the answer in it, it's usually faster to just type the keywords into the search bar of Firefox to find the answer quickly.

Online Purchasing (Part I): Comfort

A couple years ago I bought my first items over the internet. It was several hundred dollars worth of computer parts to build my first computer. When I ordered the parts I was pretty nervous and didn't completely trust the internet yet, but I didn't really have a choice since the parts I wanted were much cheaper on Newegg than at the local computer shop. The parts made it to my house safely within a few days and everything turned out great. Since I made that first purchase Ive been much more comfortable purchasing things online. In fact, I actually purchase most things over the internet now, so long as they aren't really cheap or really expensive. I used to go buy PC games at the store, now I can just order then through the games website and download the entire game within a couple hours. I started out uncomfortable purchasing online, but since Ive never had anything bad happen from it, Ive actually become just as comfortable purchasing most things online as at the store. Since I made my first purchase online several years ago Ive made countless purchases online anywhere from video games, to computer parts, to movie posters.

Speaking of Newegg, a couple weeks ago in class someone brought up Egghead, a computer parts store that went under when the internet started selling things. When I heard Egghead mentioned I couldn't help but wonder if Newegg is the internet version of Egghead.

Exit133

So, a couple weeks ago we had a guest speaker in our class named Derek Young. Derek maintains Exit133, a website devoted to all the happenings of Tacoma. The one thing that really stood out to me during Derek's speech is that he managed to make a new post on his blog almost everyday, even when he had only a very small audience to write to. That just amazes me that he could write that much and stay interesting, when I struggle to find things to write on twice a week. I suppose he can find things to continue to write on because he has his helpers that help find him topics, but him keeping the topics interesting is still completely because of his writing style. Over the past few years Exit133 has really grown and isn't just a blog anymore, its a community built around Tacoma. I thought it was really awesome to get to meet someone who was so skilled at blogging and ran such an influential website, good job getting him into the class. It was a cool day and I look forward to meeting any other guest speakers we might have.