Week 3 EOC : Spotify

When you hear the name "Pandora", what do you think of? In the past, perhaps the answer would have been "Pandora's Box" or some reference to Greek mythology. However, pretty much everyone who uses the Internet today knows that Pandora is a website that streams live music in a sort of "radio" type format that you can customize depending on your taste in music. It has been very popular because it's a free site for everyone, and if you would like to have more options within the program they also offer a paid version. Their success brought about quite a bit of attention, especially in Europe. Reporters were wondering whether the new popular European music streaming service Spotify could unseat Pandora (P) in the U.S. Strong revenue growth reported later in 2011 only seemed to underscore the threat, even though Spotify was still running in the red. Not to mention, Spotify has taken it's interaction with popular social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to a whole other level that Pandora has yet to realize. Fast forward six months and things look different. Although 3 million U.S. consumers signed up for the service, only about 20 percent - about 600,000 - actually pay for the service in this country, according to a New York Post report. That's an enormous uptake in the world of so-called "freemium" services, where usually moderate single-digit percentages are considered successful. But if a business model is based on greater expectations and you have to get cooperation from rights holders like the music labels, success may be a much trickier prospect. The problem facing Spotify, and others in the online music industry, is the need to get along with large corporations that own rights to the bulk of music people most often listen to. That gets event trickier when you want to give music away to entice people to the paid service. Last summer, Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy said Spotify operated in a "fundamentally different marketplace," though that seems a bit of a stretch. Both companies have advertising and subscription models. It's not as though Pandora is on easy street. Music licensing costs keep rising, which resulted in a $16 million loss for the fiscal year that ended in January. But that was still significantly less of a loss than the $41.5 million that Spotify lost in 2010, as it reported last fall. As Pandora has shown, growing a music service costs a lot of money, and labels don't seem to be looking to encourage new business models. And unless either the number of listeners or the percentage of those willing to pay increases rapidly, the chance that Spotify could continue to disappoint financially would also seem to grow.

Week 2 EOC : Privacy on the Internet

It seems that today's society is torn between two very different view points when it comes to the issue of privacy on the Internet. There are a lot of theories and ideas out there about how we got to be so divided on this subject, however I believe it comes down to a simple fact of difference in generations.

Before the emergence of large social media web sites such as AOL, Facebook, and Twitter, the Internet was mainly used for things such as information sharing, business development and marketing, and (let's face it) porn. I can remember back in high school when we first started using the web our resources were very limited, and we certainly weren't using it for any kind of communication with our friends or family. It's was something more like an encyclopedia or some other source of information. Once the ability to email came about it caught on like wildfire, and so began the great war against spam, viruses, and anything else that hindered our experience on the web.

Scholars, lawyers and privacy advocates are also scrambling to sort through the implications of the rules, which set up a pitched battle between the right to privacy and freedom of expression online. The wide gap between these situations - and about a million imaginable scenarios in between - begins to map out the legal minefield the European Commission is charging through. Late last month, the executive body for the European Union proposed a strict set of privacy rules that included a "right to be forgotten." The regulations must be approved by member states, but the language sent a jolt through companies such as Google and Facebook, which have built business models dependent on user data and could face multimillion-dollar fines for infractions.

Week 2 BOC : Instagram

Social Media has taken over our lives. One way we know this to be true is that Facebook.com has over 300 million subscribers. Since the Internet is always changing, it is important for a company as large as Facebook to keep up with the times. On April 10,2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1B, and for good reason. Facebook is known for being a place where you can put pictures of you or whatever you want, onto your own personal web-space for everyone to see. Since Instagram is a mobile app that allows you to modify pictures that you have taken on a mobile device, it would only seem natural for Facebook to acquire this technology to make their interface even more user-friendly (especially since Instagram already has 30 million users).

This acquisition however has caused a lot of fuss because people are concerned that Facebook will take over the app and make it their own, however that is not the case. According to Matthew Panzarino, the News and Apple Editor of TheNextWeb.com, “The users get a better experience. Facebook gets more data. Users that are quitting Instagram because the service may be ‘ruined’ are barking up the wrong tree. Facebook sees the value in the network as it is, a photo creation machine with a lot of user love.”

Another concern that the Instagram users have is that they don’t want Facebook to have access to any more of their information. According to an articlefrom TheNextWeb.com on April 10, 2012, “FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is flat-out interested in ‘buildingthe best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family.” Some say that this is just PR jargon, and that they still are worried about the security of their information… however to those people I say, if you don’t want people to have access to it, don’t post it on the web!

Week 1 EOC : About Me

Ever since I was young, I've had a deep passion for technology. I was known as the kid who asked "Why?" about everything around me. This thirst for a higher knowledge of the world around me is something that I still carry with me to this day. My passion is web-design and anything to do with that realm of technology. I have been working as a free-lance web designer for many years, and I am constantly striving to expand my knowledge of the tools and topics that involve this field. Since the web is something that is constantly evolving and changing with the demands of society it can be a difficult thing to master. However, I take this topic very seriously and I strive to be one of the best in my field by challenging myself to do different types of projects that force me to think outside of my own box. One day I hope to work for a professional ad agency here in the Las Vegas valley where I can exploit my talents as a web-designer by providing my clients with custom built sites that appeal to their target audience across all platforms and devices.

Week 1 EOC : Modern Internet

When I was 13, I got a big lesson in computers from my father who sat me down and helped me build my first desktop PC from the motherboard up. Since that day, it has been my desire to learn more about this wonderful technology and use it to my advantage. However, it seems like I’ve been stumped on coming up with the next “great idea” that would launch my career.

Today, I was reading about one of the top sites on the internet today called MediaFire.com, and I was shocked to find that the President and CEO of the company, Derek Labian, got his start at the young age of 16. MediaFire.com is a service that helps people store, organize, and share data via the Internet for you to share with your family, friend, associates, etc.What makes them special, is that they are the only file sharing site to offer unlimited downloads, uploads, storage, and download resuming, zero wait times,and many more features, all for free! They have over 12 million daily visitors, 25 million people registered on MediaFire.com, over 100% yearly growth since 2006, users at 86% of the Fortune 500 companies, premium customers in 121 countries, and users in over 230 countries around the globe! Pretty impressive if you ask me!