Webgrrls Wisdom » Pauline Karakat | Eleven Years of Google

Eleven Years of Google

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:30:43 +0000

When I found out that Google just celebrated its 11^th birthday last weekend, I couldn’t help but think about how integral it has been to my Internet experience, and the experiences of countless of other users all over the world. I find myself using Google as my main online search site whenever I want to find something fast, and I am always amazed how much more extensive and precise the results of my web searches are compared to those performed on other sites. It is believed to be the most visited site on Earth, which should come to no surprise to anyone. Even the word Google is a household name because it is unique and easy to remember.

I use Google News when I am looking for the latest headlines, Blogger when writing for two different blogs, and Google Earth when I am interested in determining what the surroundings of any location in the world are. I also use Google Maps when figuring out driving directions, but this function alone has been problematic for me in the past, because I must admit I have gotten incorrect directions from it. As a safety and when I have time to look up directions, I check at least one other site to compare the routes and determine which I will trust and follow more. I am also a big fan of Picasa when sending and storing photographs to friends and family, which alleviates the fear of losing images forever if my computer or laptop crashes and I haven’t backed up all my data. I am avoiding the latter, just in case.

Looking back at the good, the bad, and everything in between, I have to admit that the Internet has been a very interesting place since Google was conceived and launched to an unsuspecting public. The online experience would be a very different place if it never existed, and that would not have been a good thing.

Google has been an integral part of my Internet experience, and as a search engine it is the closest thing to perfection I have seen on the Internet. If the company keeps doing what it is doing while striving to innovate and improve all of its services and programs, Google will continue to be on top for years to come.

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Too Much Information on the Internet

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:15:34 +0000

We all know someone or at least have heard about people who put too much of their personal information on the Internet. There have been numerous reports of people who are fired or refused jobs because potential employers find objectionable images or other details about them on their FaceBook or MySpace pages. I have always been conscious of keeping my personal information to a minimum in the public view. For example, when someone searches my name on the Internet, they only find some articles I have written and some of the social networking sites I have accounts with. My address is no where to be found; if I am required to identify my location, the information is as general as I can make it.

Many of the following tips are common sense, but I think they are worth mentioning.

· In addition to your address, try not to put your phone number out there too. This obviously doesn’t apply to small business owners who want to promote their businesses. Still, e-mail addresses are ideal because you can always adjust your spam filter and block addresses if needed.

· Setting your relationship status on FaceBook or MySpace to anything you want isn’t a problem, unless this information is something you don’t want other people in your life to find out about. If you are in an “open relationship” and one of the people in it are not aware of this, you may not want to publicize this. If you have the option to set your social networking sites to a private setting (accessible to friends only or completely private) then do so.

· As mentioned earlier, any objectionable images of you (or those which can be construed as objectionable) should be taken down from public view, or placed on more private pages. Remember, even if you think your grandmother will never see the crazy vacation pictures you posted a year ago, I wouldn’t take the risk. After all, someone else could always print out them out or show them to her on their computer or cell phone.

Just be careful when you are on the Internet. The virtual space may seem imaginary because we cannot stand in it or experience it on a tangible level, but it is very real…and it can backfire on us if we are not cautious.

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Online Journalism: It’s All Been Said Before

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:00:42 +0000

It isn’t news that most of us get our news via the Internet these days. If you have a computer with online access, it is much easier to find the latest news on national and other news sites that are far too numerous to mention. My father still gets the Wall Street Journal seven days a week, but when I am home I hardly (if ever) look at it. It is just easier to go online and find the latest news. What makes it so much more popular is that news is constantly being posted and updated every hour, if not every minute. Just refresh the Google News page and you can often see new stories listed ahead of the one you were just looking at.

But the idea that there is “too much of a good thing” does apply to the bounty of free, online journalism. The constant need to put the latest news on the Internet can affect the quality of the writing or ignore the credibility of the sources used. Many news sites (alternative, national, and international) have reputable journalists providing content, but there are those other sites that have questionable contributors with dubious writing and editing skills. I have seen a quite a few spelling, grammatical and even factual errors when reading articles online, but these can easily be corrected; once an article is published in a traditional newspaper or magazine, any errors are there to stay.

Last year I attended a conference on the future of micro-blogging and online news sites as a whole and was surprised to find that many of the attendees where in the advertising industry. Obviously, the tensions in the room were high; I almost expected a screaming match between one of the panelists and an advertising executive in the audience. The general consensus of the panelists was that a new advertising model must be developed to adapt to the rapidly growing online journalism industry. Journalists, editors, graphic designers, photographers, and all others that contribute to online content should be paid, and I also believe that traditional advertising methods must change. When one disgruntled audience member suggested charging visitors to online news sites a small fee, many others balked at the notion. I just don’t see it happening; what I do know is that the “powers that be” have to think of something. Online journalism is here to stay; and no one wants to pay for it.

What are your thoughts on the online journalism and its future?

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Forty Years of the Internet—Maybe

Pauline Karakat — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:00:54 +0000

No one can agree on a specific date when the Internet truly began. Some believe that its birth occurred forty years ago, but you don’t have to be an expert in the subject to know that the various aspects that make up the Internet were invented at different times to make it what it is today. Now it is a life line of communication throughout the world; many teachers use the Internet to assign homework and reading materials to their students, businesses rely on it for communications and other work-related tasks, and many people like me use it for just about everything. I can remember a time when I didn’t have a computer, or even an email address. My communications consisted of phone calls and letters exclusively. Now I have to sift through my teeming inboxes of several email accounts to find non-spam correspondence. I don’t have rose-colored glasses when I think about time before the Internet was a well-known household term, but I do know that I had less of a tendency to stay home for extended periods of time back then. Information is at our fingertips, and that is great, but we all know that too much of a good thing can have opposite effects sometimes.

This Labor Day, and just after the unofficial 40^th anniversary of the Internet, I find myself respecting the technology and the people behind it (too numerous to count) who created this virtual medium that has truly contributed to the world of communication and globalization. There really is no going back, and I look forward to the future of the online communications and technology.

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Learning French Via the World Wide Web

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:00:27 +0000

I just completed taking French classes in New York City, which set me back a few hundred dollars. I was happy to pay, because it motivated me to resume my plans to become bilingual. I have my text books from college, my recent French class, and copious notes that I continue to pour over. Still, I know that when my class finished, I had to keep up my studies. There is no teacher to tell me to finish homework and study all the verb tenses. I know that I will be relying on the World Wide Web, in addition to other traditional resources, when it comes to my continuing studies in French.

The infinite resources to be found on the Internet seem limitless, but I think I know which sites I can rely on for my language studies. In addition to a few online language lessons, I have found the complete French language series entitled French in Action, which came out in the late 1980s and was developed by a Yale University professor. As a child, I remember watching re-runs of the series, which was completely in French and was centered on a young French woman, her family, and friends in Paris on PBS. The language immersion technique is very effective, and I am very happy to have found it online so I can watch and absorb the lessons at my own pace.

The best sites to help me with “on the spot” language learning are the online dictionaries. I usually alternate between WordReference.com and Yahoo! Babel Fish. Not sure what the future tense of the verb savoir (which in English means “to know”) is? I usually find myself on verbe2verbe.com or Conjugationfr.com to make sure I spelled my conjugated verbs properly. I prefer the former site because it gives the most accurate definition of the verb in English. I have also found that if I spell the word wrong and there are no direct matches given, a list of other, similarly spelled verbs appears in the left-hand column. For someone who needs as much as I can get, I am very grateful for these useful additions.

If I can help it, I will not let the dust settle on my French language lessons again. With the help of my own personal resources, the library, conversations with French-speaking friends, and the World Wide Web, I may one day be able to call myself bilingual.

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The Advantages of a Virtual Workplace

Pauline Karakat — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:30:17 +0000

While the recession runs its course around the world, it is good to know that companies are taking advantage of the virtual workplace. For many industries, it makes sense to have people work from home for at least part of the week. It saves companies money and helps retain their employee base at the same time. As a contractor myself, I wonder about some of the companies I worked for in the past. While I am glad that my assignments with them are complete, I know there are those who would have liked to continue with our past employers on some level. Instead, they call people to come in for a short period of time, let them go, and then call them back several months later, if they are still available. I understand the need for seasonal contractors, but when I have observed how much some of these companies have lost money on completely superfluous expenses, it boggles my mind at how willing they are to let go of talented people as a consequence.

Companies like IBM and Sun Microsystems seem to know how to make their virtual workplaces work for them and their productivity. What I see as the ideal virtual workplace is one in which the employer and employee have trust in one another, and have no desire to abuse that trust. It is where an employee works hard, but knows when to stop each day, and the employer gives freedom to the employee to have a personal life, without compromising the work flow. I also see a good virtual workplace as one that allows employers and employees to have face time with one another, and that doesn’t include web conferences. It is easy to feel disconnected from others you work for or work with if you never see them.

So while some people might think being in a virtual workplace lacks structure and growth for a company, I saw they are wrong. Virtual workplaces are here to stay, and will continue to grow throughout the economies around the world.

What are your thoughts on the virtual workplace?

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Passing on E-Book Readers

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:30:38 +0000

I appreciate and even enjoy technology as much as the next person, but there are some aspects that I will never be a fan of: an e-book reader is a perfect example of this. I am unapologetically old-fashioned when it comes to books, because I love turning pages, even though I know many would argue about the destruction of trees to make them. While I understand the convenience of having a Kindle or Sony Reader that contains content from numerous books is highly attractive to many, I will never see it as a replacement for traditional paperbacks and hardcover books. I am not saying I wouldn’t accept it as a gift, but I definitely wouldn’t go out of my way to buy one.

Recent news of a high school student suing Amazon for removing the electronic version of George Orwell’s 1984 hasn’t helped to improve my opinion of electronic readers and digital reading as a whole. Although I believe the plaintiff should have had a hard copy version of his notes, I can understand how disconcerting it must have been to turn on one’s e-book reader and find that the content (which was paid for in good faith) was deleted without warning. It is a lesson for anyone who has, or is considering the purchase of this type of electronic device. I don’t know if this case will make it to court or not, but it makes me glad that I have not become a digital reading devotee.

The bottom line is that many of us are already reading and viewing way too much on our computers, laptops, and mobile phones. I think we need to step away from our screens to rest our eyes and just take a break from technology from time to time. After all, the human race survived without e-books for centuries. I will stick to libraries and book stores of all sorts, thank you!

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Thoughts On India’s Technology Renaissance

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:00:29 +0000

At the company I am currently freelancing for, I called the help desk to configure my computer settings, which was easily and quickly, done with no misunderstandings to speak of. The woman I spoke to over the phone was obviously an Indian, living and working in India. She understood my thick American accent and I understood hers; my family is from the country, after all. It struck me how normal it now is to speak to Indians quite frequently to help resolve a wide range of tech issues. When my phone call was complete and my Internet connection was up and running, I also realized how India’s strong presence and involvement in IT (Internet technology) should not be surprising; throughout history, the country has made significant contributions to the advancement of human civilization. Its people have moved all around the world to settle, work, and flourish in almost anything they choose to do. India’s “Technology Renaissance” period, which has been growing since the mid 1990s, is just the most recent phenomenon to become globally recognized. Like anyone else who is interested, I can’t help wondering what the future holds for Mother India and the people within her borders, and beyond.

Outsourcing has almost singlehandedly revolutionized India’s economy, and cities like Bangalore in Southern India are now synonymous with this subcontracting process. My parents knew Bangalore as a popular honeymoon destination. Now, the city’s residents are surrounded by historical remnants and the burgeoning IT industry. Even though Western sentiment is generally against outsourcing jobs to India, we all should agree that the Indian economy has flourished considerably because of the influx of tech jobs that have become available to the people there. The companies who choose to cut costs by outsourcing are the ones who are “to blame” for depriving their fellow citizens of employment.

Now that Bill Gates has given his encouragement and advice concerning the future of India’s tech industry to the country’s business and government leaders, the India’s “Technology Renaissance” will continue to grow for years to come. I personally don’t mind that when I call for tech support, I speak to someone from India or anywhere else. As long the issues are resolved and I can understand what he or she is saying on the other end, I am content…for now.

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Mac or PC: Indecision Reigns

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:00:07 +0000

Honestly, I don’t know where I stand in the epic Mac or PC battle that rages among users around the world. I am frustrated with my current PC laptop, which I have had for almost five years now. I know that my machine is nearing its untimely end, which hurts because I just set up a wireless network for my home earlier this year. Before that, I was taking my laptop to a local café chain to take advantage of the free connection I received there. Now when I think about it, the service wasn’t free, because I had to buy something in order to stay there and remain connected.

When I got connected at home, the trouble began. I noticed that my Internet connection would get slower and slower, and then these horrendous pop-ups and explicit web sites starting popping up. I knew that viruses had over-run my system, and I quickly took it to get it “cleaned,” for a fee. Before this, I downloaded free anti-virus software that came highly recommended, but it either did nothing or contributed to my system crashing. I will never download anything like it again—I bought the Norton ™ Internet Security software and have been satisfied ever since. It may hurt financially at first, but in the long run, it’s worth it.

Now my power cord is frayed and its looking like I am will have to replace it. These occasional but annoying drawbacks make me wonder if paying over $1000 for a MacBook Pro is worth it in the long run. They are lightweight and apparently quite durable, which is good for me because I can be accident prone at times. I don’t know how it happened, but my current Dell laptop has a slightly long yet subtle crack near the keyboard. I also keep hearing that Macs are much more virus-resistant than their PC counterparts, which leaves me wondering if it is worth shelling out all that money up front for the former is a more sensible investment.

I guess I know the answer my questions, but I am not planning to run out and buy a Mac anytime soon. I think I am going to slug it out until next spring or early summer before I decide to purchase a new laptop. I’m off to my local electronics megastore to buy a new power cord for my old PC. This is not the time for big financial splurges, even though I’ve been known to indulge in the past. I am just praying that my machine will keep for another year. In the meantime, I am backing up all my files and praying that the inevitable won’t become a reality anytime soon.

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A Global Cyber War?

Pauline Karakat — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:00:19 +0000

It isn’t news that the Internet is both an incredibly informative and extremely chaotic virtual space. Like millions of others, it is highly unusual for me to go one day without checking email or doing a Google search. I am dependent on the World Wide Web; I would like to think that if I was in a remote location for an extended period of time where Internet access is limited, I would be satisfied with going online once a week, at least. The thought of such sparse contact might frighten most, but I would welcome it, if I didn’t have anything urgent to take care of.

Why do I bring up the possibility of the lack of access to the Internet? When I heard the news about cyber attacks originating from North Korea, I started to think seriously about what I would do if I could no longer go online without being besieged by maliciously created viruses. The isolated and angry dictatorship seems to be doing its best to launch attacks on South Korea and its allies in any way they can. Could a “cyber war” be in our imminent future? While no lives might be lost in this situation, such an event would definitely damage people’s abilities to communicate and acquire knowledge on any topic in a speedy (yet concise) manner.

How should we prepare ourselves for the devastating possibilities of a global “cyber war?” The first suggestion that comes to mind is to keep hard copies of all important documents, images, emails, and any necessary contact information you may need at any time. The other suggestion is to keep posted on the news, without becoming pre-occupied or too nostalgic about the past. Both of these steps are very important when preparing for the worst.

Still, I don’t think that we should become too paranoid and scared about a possible situation. It is hard achieve some sort of balance, but it can be done—at least I hope so.

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