Week 11 - Poke

A poke has gained new meaning after the popularity of Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, you mostly likely are aware of the poke feature. If not, you can just check out Facebook's long list of questions and answers about the poke feature, which, to me, essentially seems pointless. It's kind of random and funny but it serves no real purose. Awhile back, the application SuperPoke! became popular on Facebook. It was like a poke except that you had to add the application and there were way more random things to do to your friends other than poking. For example, you could dance with your friends, throw random objects at your friends, or even high fiiiive your friends. It's a virtual way of doing things with your friends without having to actually do them.

Back to the simple poke feature: What seems like an innocent gesture caused a Tennesse woman to be arrested for violating a protective order against her by poking the person who had the order against her. It's being determined if the poke was done by her from her computer or by a hacker. It's also being determined whether or not it was an imposter's site that did the poking. I don't really know what to say about this. Is a Facebook poke a violation of a protective order? I found the legal definition of it and one thing it said on there that caught my attention is that usually protective orders have a specified distance one party must stay away from the other party. But what about "virtual distances"? With the growth of social media, does that need to be considered in writing laws like this? According to the original news article, a poke is still a form of communication. What do you think? Should this woman have been arrested? Was a poke a violation of the protective order? Should it be?

Week 7 - Photosharing

After reading about photosharing this week, I had to count the number of places I had my photos backed up. First, they're all on memory cards. I have about five memory cards, all filled with photos. I don't just delete photos after I upload them onto a computer; I just buy a new memory card when I need one. Secondly, they're all uploaded onto my laptop computer that I own. Third, they're all safely uploaded onto an external hardrive - My Passport. Fourth, they're all printed off and put into albums (I even have a shoebox full of some doubles of the photos I really like). And last, I have them all uploaded onto the internet (most of them are on Facebook). Needless to say, my photos are very important to me. It's also important to me that others get to see my photos, which is why I have them on display all over my apartment and on Facebook. Most of them are just candids of my friends and I out doing something fun. I usually take a picture to document something--like a fun camping trip or whatnot. Photos also capture a memory and keep it for me. I like to go back and look at them and feel the memory.

This week, I've considered taking advantage of photosharing sites. I use Photobucket to host my images that I want to put on my MySpace (because Photobucket automatically writes a code for them). I also put some other photos on there, but not many. I feel like Facebook is enough for me. It may not be an exclusive photosharing site, but it allows me to upload them into albums, and allow others to view and comment on them. One of the features I really like about some of the photosharing sites I've learned about this week is the editing tool featured on many of the sites. It would save the hassle of uploading photos to Photoshop then to the photosharing site. It is especially a nice feature for me in the summer, when I don't have a computer with Photoshop software. On the other hand, I don't really like the idea of sharing photos with people I don't even know. It just doesn't appeal to me, because why would someone care, especially considering a lot of my photos consist of people--probably people they don't know. So, I have thought about using photosharing more often, but do I really need another place to put my photos? The internet is the most secure place, in my opinion (referring to never losing them), and I might not always have a Facebook account, so I'm thinking about it...