Planning to Plan

Well it seems this week I am supposed to tell you all about how I plan to use this blog for my class as well as personal use. Oh goody, goody! I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you all my plans:

• I plan to write down every second of my life and put it right here on these pages.
• I plan for my students to make comments on my posts every class period. (I will drive them all to my house every hour of every school day because this blog is blocked at school.)
• I plan to create 6 billion more blogs - one for each person so I can personally communicate with every living member of planet earth.
• I plan to donate all of my money to the United States so we can end the national debt.
• I plan to solve world hunger (If people would quit working and rest and read the personal blogs I will make for them, there will be less need for food.)
• I plan to end all wars and find free, alternative sources of energy.
• I plan to find a solution to global warming.

Wow - maybe I am really a decent person after all! I am really feeling good about myself at this point. I guess it really is possible for people to change. From this point on, I will only do good for mankind, repent for all my past transgressions, be a model citizen, run for saint.

However, I am a bit hungry at the moment - mind if I start all this tomorrow?

H. Lecter, PhD

Something Wiki This Way Comes

Greetings Campers,

The last lesson in our veb dos dot naught adventure dealt with the wild and wonderful world of wikis. Are they wicked or wonderful? Alas, like me, they are both - a dichotomous duo of darling and demon! The premise of these is that they are an online encyclopedia to be created, enjoyed and edited by all the social Internet community. I must admit that I use these quite a bit for when I need a new recipe or need to experiment with some unusual ingredients.

Wikihow is quite nice when I need to know how to do something and Wikipedia is a plethora of quite useful information. The downside is that on occasion someone decides to go in and add their own malicious edits to pages that contain lots of wonderful information. The community usually takes care of this rather swiftly and if you find malicious content, by all means report it to them so they can fix the problem. All in all I find them most agreeable.

And you know what I do to rude people!

L

Finally, Something I Can Sink My Teeth Into

This week in my web 2 point zero class (who got two? I'm still at zero!), we delved into the fascinating world of aggregators, RSS feeds and social bookmarking. I must admit that these do have some merit in the world of education albeit they, too, can get out of hand real fast.

I have had a separate iGoogle page setup for quite a while now. It is one of my homepages and I receive a good many RSS feeds most of them dealing with science, technology and new gadgets. I must freely admit, however, that all the rigmarole around setting them up to get blog feeds and then sharing them with the public almost sank their arachnid fangs into me! I have persevered, however, and gotten over their rude ways of accomplishing what should be rather elementary tasks. Only time will tell if they will show merit for me in the long run.

Social bookmarking, on the other hand, is something I can see great merit in. Being able to pull up a list of 'favorites' from anywhere in the world is a good thing. I never know when the urge might hit and I might need an obscure recipe for favre beans and liver!

Okey-dokey. Here we go........

Regards,

your old pal, Hannibal Lecter

Privacy - That Silly Old Thing Again?

One of the reasons I have used the Hannibal Lecter persona is because it parallels so well with the Internet and this social networking phenomena that is occurring these days. Dr. Lecter is suave and sophisticated, a man of taste, manners and distinction on the outside. Inside he is an absolute monster.

The television & other media, banks, law enforcement, and officials all tell us not to give out personal information in emails, over the phone or anywhere else unless you trust the person you are conversing with. Yet this very blog has places to include all kinds of personal information. We are even encouraged to share this with others. Why the Internet is all good people, right? We're just a great big old happy family and no one would ever do anything malicious.

You wouldn't mind giving little old me a little information about yourself now would you .... go ahead and tell me all about you in your blogs. Please be sure to include your name, address, phone number, email address, where you work, what you do. I promise never to do anything with this information. I am just interested in you and would love to know a little bit more about you.

Quid pro quo, Clarice, I told you what you wanted to know. Now tell me what I want to know.

Quid pro quo,

H.L.

The proliferation of chatter

Anyone reading this is most likely a fellow student in an educational online class I am taking. I have learned that as I carefully craft each sentence, another blog is being created somewhere. So, I have an idea for the next device that will make you a billionaire.

Some creative programmer type locked in his room should invent a piece of software that will be able to automatically index and categorize all the stuff that is being written in this "exciting" and "cutting edge" new medium. and systematically d-e-l-e-t-e 100% of the mindless chatter. Then, submit your idea to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or one of the others so they can make searching on the Internet relevant again.

"Why that is censorship!" you say. Perhaps I would agree, but something will eventually have to be done to cull the amount of information being added every second. I do not even have time to read all the blogging that will be done by my fellow students in this online class. Imagine if I were going to add a room full of students to the mix.

The lambs are screaming Clarice,

L

Well this is fun -

NOT!

Dr. Lecter