My COM 300 course experience

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation re-introduces an idea that Sam Walton had successfully demonstrated is possible many years ago: consumers are drawn to more affordable prices.  Make a product affordable for a group and the buyers will come.

This is only part of the mission of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation; the OLPC does not mention the word “market” on its website.  The OLPC project is an endeavor that attempts to decrease the digital divide against students in countries that cannot afford computing equipment.  The project and the organization were brought to the world’s attention at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in 2005.  Funded by organizations like AMD, eBay, Nortel Networks, and the like, it was bound to be a huge success:  enticing prices that governments around the globe would agree with and profit to boot. 

The idea is outstanding.  However, it may be that the capitalist actions taken by Intel in pursuing this “untapped market” as described by its own website is the best way to get those computers out there.  As OLPC Project founder stated, the list price of the laptops is expected to decrease when the organization receives more orders for laptops. Intel may be onto something here by entering the competition.  It is tough to read that OLPC was taking losses earlier when it was selling the laptops for less than they were costing to make, and hoping that orders would increase to make up and bring down the cost of production.  The school systems should reap the benefit of this competition; the prices are driven down and this may free up more money to buy a larger volume of laptops.

The Boston Globe reported in 2007 that as the nonprofit organization was having difficulty lowering the cost of the laptops while gaining profits, Intel and Asus Computer International of Taiwan were already introducing their own cheap laptops.  Asus and Intel’s move into the “nonprofit” business of selling affordable laptops to developing countries for use in school systems creates a competitive market that I think will result in the collapse of the OLPC, but not its vision. 

What OLPC did was shed the light on an untapped market of buyers.  The issue with OLPC and its vision is that it is primarily an altruistic one, at least at its front, whereas Asus and Intel are primarily for profitability.  OLPC has “rejected the idea of selling its laptops as a retail product in affluent nations” (Boston Globe), whereas the larger corporations have not.  Asus has already waded into the market of richer communities, where its marketers see a large market of users.  I believe that while the endeavor and the purpose of One Laptop Per Child is upstanding and promotes a global village and a step forward in the state of education for developing countries, maybe it should be left to corporations and competition should be encouraged to drive prices down and make laptops more available to those countries.  The best way is to let the manufacturers compete. 

Bray, Hiawatha.  “Cheap laptop as money maker.”  Boston Globe: Technology.  November 14, 2007.

 ”One Laptop per Child.”  Wikipedia entry.  Can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

Stern, Joanna.  “Intel vs. OLPC:  A Battle of Good Wills.”  Laptop Magazine, April 24, 2007.  Can be found at http://archive.laptopmag.com/features/Intel-vs-OLPC-Battle-of-Good-Wills.htm

If I had to guess, the North Jersey Record and the Press Enterprise, and perhaps the Columbus Dispatch were the newsites that are sort of “mainstream media” where many people go to get their news, and the Orange County Register was more like a small-town newsite.  My favorite was the North Jersey Register…I guess for me the appeal of the newsite has to be the tone of the content – I wish all news articles were as sterile and unbiased as possible – as well as the aesthetics of the website itself.  It shouldn’t be too cluttered or look too mundane as if the newpaper just mandated a website because it had to keep its readers. 

I also am more inclined to get my news from the larger newsites because I tend to discuss things happening nationally and internationally more than locally, especially at the water cooler with co-workers.  All of the news sites had many ads.  I think it was the North Jersey Record that opened up with an ad and I had to get rid of it before entering the site.  I believe the Columbus Dispatch had the most ads, and a lot of flash ads.  Those are the ads that are most distracting; I just like to get into the website and find the news, and the ads just slow things down sometimes. 

The sites I studied were the North Jersey Record, the Orange County Register, Tulsa World, and Press Enterprise.  If I absolutely had to choose one of these sites as my resource for the news all the time, it would be the North Jersey Record, because it is so compact and just very neatly laid out.  It was only a half of a mouse roll long, with tabs that make it very easy for me to find what I want to read. 

The dullest one was the Orange County Register.  Except for that nice looking orange where the IE icon would be (what is that called, anyway?), the page reminded me of an electronic newsletter, too crowded with so many headlines, the sections squished together.  I would take a wild guess that this is really a local newspaper that also needed an electronic front.  There should be a suggestion box where the owner asks, what do you think of our site? 

The PE and the North Jersey Register both had slides showing the headlines right as you arrive at the website, so I think that these papers are possibly large newspapers that many locals go to for national news, and that they are updated in real time.  The Tulsa World had so much focus on sports, the sports was the latest news, and a picture of a basketball game was the featured picture in the latest news section.  If

The MIT article makes a good case that the digital divide disproportionately empowers the side that has accessibility.  I do take it for granted that I have access that I do not have to lobby to get at this point.  With the availability of wi-fi at our campuses and at public libraries, I think WA state has done comparatively well to bring Internet access to those who want and need it; this forward-thinking attitude is something that all states should emulate if not already. 

The article brings out the SARI project as a positive example of how Internet can be brought to rural areas and shows the cost-benefit analysis of doing so.  I guess what I came away with reading about the SARI project was that there are ways that providers can cut the costs of financing and running the operation, including getting the subscribers to pay for a fraction of the network costs.  It is interesting to read that the UN is also bringing to attention the idea that policy-makers should make Universal access a priority; this idea advocates giving license exemptions to small businesses, which makes me wonder how the larger telecom companies react, since they must pay substantial license fees for their services, which reminds me of the two-tier system that I read about some time ago.  The article brings out the benefits of Internet access in terms of economic and political freedom; it also makes the case in the SARI project that these folks in the rural areas want and are willing to pay for Internet access.  What I would be interested to follow up on is if these state-of-the art improvements to technology have in fact lowered the costs of access and thus increased profitability for the providers. 

I admit that I must be privileged if I cannot imagine a digital divide where there are people who do not have convenient access because potential providers do not find it profitable.

 Questions:

1) What are Americans’responsibility in making Internet access universal?  Should we be responsible?  Why or why not?

2) In what ways can we gauge the benefits of the Internet divide decreasing?

3) What would happen if Internet service providers became completely regulated?  How would it affect the speed and availability to households?

The two sites that I picked, RealClimate and the American Civil Liberties Union, cover two topics that I have developed a casual interest in throughout my college years:  climate change, and first amendment rights.  I thought it would be an interesting diversion from the Presidential candidates’ websites that we have been covering in class.

 The RealClimate site has the format of a blog of all things climate science.  Its sidebar, situated on the right, has the widgets:  Recent Comments; Inline Responses; Categories (all listed, unhidden); Contributors; Highlights (popular posts); Other Opinions (Blogroll); Science Links (external links); translations; Email Notification (a subscribe link); Other (for blog authors to log in or write a new post); and Meta – RSS feeds.  The translations seem to work only on selected texts. 

The top bar shows 6 tabs, which all light up when you run your mouse across them:  home; about; index; people; archive; start here.  The index link shows a list of all the posts indexed under different categories; the archive link just shows each month hyperlinked.  Perhaps since this site is in blog style it would have been easier to show the hyperlinked months on the front page, instead of creating a new page just for a list of months.  In blog fashion the most recent post is at the top of the page when you arrive at the site.  At the bottom of each post has a “share this” link, a link to post a comment, and a link that shows bloggers that linked to the post with their own reaction post. 

The writing style of the RealClimate posts seems informal:  a bunch of respected scientists in the field writing commentary on a blog – commentary on conferences they have attended relevant to climate science, commentary on articles written by other scientists, and more.  In one article titled “What if you held a conference, and no (real) scientists came?” dated January 30 and filed under Climate Science, the author discussed a “climate change” conference that turned out to be sponsored by a research institute fronting for the fossil fuel industry; the purpose of the conference was to generate attention and coverage by the media.  In another article, “The IPCC model simulation archive,” posted February 4, is about climate models and model simulations and goes beyond my comprehension.  RealClimate seems to serve as a social networking site: the audience is very interactive and apparently  consist of a community of fellow scientists and other scholars, from what I can tell in much of the dialogue in the comments:  people contributing their thoughts, ideas and expertise.  Perhaps given the subject matter, the website is not updated every day. 

The ACLU website is a political activist.  Upon arriving at the site I am greeted with an imbedded ad to sign a petition to tell congress to say no to wiretaps and telecom immunity; invited to enter my e-mail to sign the email.  Very discretely under this ad there is a hyperlink to their user agreement and privacy statement.  In the center of the website under the petition ad there are headlines.  They are not up to the minute; the most recent article is dated February 27.  The top bar shows 6 tabs:  About the ACLU; Supreme Court; Legislative Update; Action Center; Donate Now; and Newsroom.  On the right sidebar there are tabs of 21 different issues that may concern me, the visitor.  When I click on one tab, Reproductive Freedom, I get to a page that offers printable materials, invitations to send letters to Congress and others, breaking and latest news.  There are links on the right to related issues: abortion, birth control, sex education, religion, and general.  Most of the articles seem to be authored by internal sources:  the latest news were all press releases. 

I think the site works for visitors who share similar views, and visitors who are possibly searching for information about the organization’s stances on issues.   The articles and especially the coverage of court cases are written in the ACLU’s voice and view, so if a visitor was looking for information on both sides he would have to look elsewhere for detailed information about the opponent’s view, except that of course if he were to do that the same one-sided content would be posted there.  But the ACLU does not seem to hide its agenda and shows the actual court cases and written opinions and etc. by the court, most especially the Supreme Court.  I think it’s a useful website for a person who is trying to find more information on an issue that he feels similarly about.  I am estimating that a person with strong conservative views on a lot of the issues might disagree with everything he reads or be just plain offended by the site. 

Also, on the home page there is a left lower bar for visitors to “get involved”:  tabs for signing up, becoming a member, donating, and taking action, are all on this blue bar. 

Personally I enjoyed both sites very much; as a non-expert I came away feeling like I learned a lot of interesting things.  The ACLU site is designed to mobilize readers; the RealClimate site seems to be for that community of scientists and subject matter experts. 

Upon checking out an online Vintage clothing store business, recommended by my sister, I came across the fact that this lovely online store did all of its business transactions on e-bay, and it also had a link to a hip and spiffy myspace page.  When I checked out its myspace page, the first thing I did was check out all its top friends.  I think the profile had more than a dozen top friends, all a mixture of what looked like personal contacts/friends, and other local businesses.  Then I check out those businesses if I have time, and see if they’re local and in my area and etc.  I thought that this was a smart and innovative way for a business to advertise itself.  Now I don’t know about the deal of these businesses accessing my personal information on myspace but I, as I’m sure many others, have my privacy settings pretty tight so that only friends can access my information.  Even so, my profile is so generice that this certain business really won’t get much personal information on my profile.  And I am a consumer who discriminates based on the look of the page – if it’s cluttered or just neglected-looking, I might click back and search again.  I also agree with the spam and pop-ups; those are a turn-off but it doesn’t normally deter me from navigating the page unless I’m being bombarded with a huge amount as soon as I get to the page.

 I think that local, small businesses can thrive and do better than they would normally do with some exposure from social networking sites.  It shows to me that they are with the trends and making that extra effort.  Even though small businesses can probably get lost in the sea anyway of all those other advertisements, when a person is making a local search for a business (such as a restaurant, clothing boutique, etc.), a social network profile makes the business seem more personal and friendly. 

Sorry, this is a little bit late because I totally went to the classroom thinking that we were all meeting up as a class even though there was no lecture.

The Columbus Dispatch front page was like a huge, long table of contents with teaser headlines.  The first list was the “up to the minute” news which is great and maybe standard for most websites?  Anyway, I got sort of lost looking for forums and photos.  I could not find a link for news photos until I scrolled down and looked closer at the lower middle right side…it could be listed as something else.  I guess showing all the tabs for a certain section, like all the different teams under the umbrella of sports, may be nice for the person who is a 1-clicker.  I don’t mind doing 2 clicks to find a story but I would see how a person might find it annoying to have to scroll down until I get to a section she likes.

The Democrat and Chronicle looks like your typical, run-of-the-mill news website, sort of plain and 2-toned, with the table of contents on one side, the list is compacted, though, so you would 2-click to find the story or subject you want.  It does not show any teaser videos, you would have to look for them on the videos page.  I like how the biggest headline’s font size is literally like a 14 or something like that.  The way the website suggests which news is most important is probably the order they’re placed top down.  I can decide for myself which is the most important news to read.

In my own experience with e-commerce I do like to read what other customers have to say about a product before I buy it and I think that is a very useful tool of e-commerce.  I also relate to the digital branding; I frequent the same sites for things I need and don’t venture from those sites very often at all.  I really usually buy books and textbooks from Amazon, Amazon sellers and I buy computer stuff from newegg.com; so I think it’s a great concept for companies to sell themselves farther out there with social networking sites.  I don’t know if newegg has forums for users to talk and interact but they do have customer reviews.  I don’t go on the forums but I understand that a lot of people do and according to the articles this tends to keep customers. 

I think that it’s commendable that Circuit City and other companies are using social networking to remain competitive in the industry.  If it helps and builds trust with customers that the company is putting itself out there and willing to see all the feedback that customers have for it then all the better.  I see all kinds of businesses using myspace for advertising space and I think it’s great that they see the commercial value in doing this.  But I think that the emails I get from all kinds of stores becomes sort of annoying.  I’m okay with being reminded by priceline.com or ebay.com that I patronize those places and that there are new deals to take advantage of, but sometimes I just get annoyed by all the junk mail that clogs my account.  Maybe if I got those emails once in a while then it wouldn’t be so annoying. 

 Questions:

1.  How can a company recover from possible consequences of getting bad reviews from customers, for instance a family-owned restaurant that ends up on yelp.com? 

2.  What are companies doing to improve customer service experiences for people who prefer to chat online or use e-mail?

Digital divide:  For those millions of people who still do not have a computer or use the Internet, they will still be reached the traditional way by political campaigns:  telephone, door-to-door, radio, television.  I thought the discussion we had in class about the millions of dollars that political campaigns collect was very revealing:  the reminder that most of these millions of dollars are spent on advertising, and especially television advertising, is astounding.  But I’m guessing that the population of people who actually don’t use the Internet is getting smaller and smaller, and the population of people who do are getting bigger and bigger.  Plus, kids that are being socialized the cultural concept of going online are turning 18 by the numbers and that means more votes.  I wonder if our culture will totally turn away from depending on traditional methods of campaigning and if so, how long it will take for that to happen.  I’m guessing it will be a few generations before traditional media becomes obsolete or less significant.   In the meantime though, the people who are reached through traditional methods aren’t being ignored.  It’s unthinkable that campaigns spend so much on TV advertising. 

I chose another article for the essay titled “Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe.”  It is a broader subject of my original topic.  The origin date of this article was August 11, 2005, and has had at least 500 revisions by, I would like to guess, at least a hundred different authors.  There was a notice in the discussion page that this article is “within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of India-related topics.”  I was very interested by the discussions in class regarding the submarine cables that were cut in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East in the span of what turned out to be a week according to wikipedia.  For this revised essay, I chose the subject because I was interested in just how much cable is connecting people around the globe and who owns all this cable.   

The wikipedia article had an informative introduction.  I believe that the entry I found described just one of many infrastructures of optical fiber cable laid out around the world.  This one is called FLAG – Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe.  FLAG is 28,000 kilometers long and connects the United Kingdom, Japan, and many other countries around the globe.  The next section of the wikipedia entry looks like a laundry list of significant landing points and also segments of the cable.  There are 4 segments with many landing points for each.  The entry itself did not describe what a landing point was but the hyperlink brings me to a page with its definition:  “the location where a submarine or other underwater cable makes landfall.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_landing_point  The segments are the Atlantic (FA-1), Alcatel-Lucent Optical Network (FALCON)(looks to connect primarily Middle East, South Asia), Europe Asia (FEA), and North Asia Loop (FNAL)/Tiger.  There was a short description of January and February 2008 service disruptions that I had read about, when the Internet cables had been severed earlier this month.  I found out that FLAG is owned by India’s Flag Telecom, a “fully-owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications.  The system runs from the eastern coast of North America to Japan” (wikipedia).

The article that I chose to read to compare with the wikipedia entry was ”Analyzing the Internet Collapse,” on ABC News.  The ABC News summarizes the events that took place and goes in-depth on the geographical location and ownership of these cables and the effects that the incident had on specifically named countries and regions.  Also, the article went into depth about how the cables are physically retrieved to be repaired. 

I could have found the information that I had found on this wikipedia entry anywhere on the Internet.  There were 13 references linked to the entry, and most of the titles indicate recent news such as the cable internet damage that happened in February 2008.  I thought this was a good quick-reference to the landing points of the FLAG and I think that the entry could have been written more indepth to include the history of this infrastructure of optical fiber – instead I was cued to click on a bunch of links.  Also, I found it very interesting that the discussion page was virtually not there – there were about two comments posted by authors, and no replies.  This is a stark contrast to the wikipedia entry that I had read earlier about the February 2008 submarine cable disruption – on that latter entry I had checked out the discussion page to find colorful, multiple conversations going on between authors about the content of the entry – one author wanted to remind everyone that wikipedia was to remain as neutral as possible, another author stated in this cable damage discussion that anyone who denied that the cable damage was just a coincidence was a fool and in denial of what’s going on in the world.

I thought that the wikipedia entry was accurate enough and quite verifiable with its dozen references.  I don’t think the entry itself had enough information.  I am guessing that the entry had been edited to the point of censure.  On the other hand, I found the ABC news article more captivating to read because even though the author did seem skeptical in discussing the damage of the submarine cables, the article was much more descriptive and read like a fascinating story that I wanted to read to the end. 

Works cited:

“Fiber Optic Link Around the Globe.”  Wikipedia.  Can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-Optic_Link_Around_the_Globe

search words used: submarine cables

“Analyzing the Internet Collapse,” by John Borland.  ABC News, February 5, 2008.  Can be found at http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4244474&page=1