In a recent event in the media, it has been uncovered by several individuals in this first article from Gizmodo that prospective employees for positions within a company are being asked to give their interviewers their private login information for their Facebook accounts. While it is not uncommon to hear that an employer may use an individual’s public Facebook profile as a basis of a background check, it has only been until recent that there have been instances where information regarding an individual’s login credentials have been asked. In the source link below, an article written by Tony Romm entitled “Senator: Ban bosses from asking for Facebook passwords” is a response to the storm of controversy that was raised when companies were revealed to be asking this information.

This kind of invasion of privacy can be a huge deterrence to potential interviewees because they don’t want their personal lives invaded without their permission. It is my belief that there should be a separation between the workplace and my social life, but at the same time I do not empathize with people who do not hire individuals based on their posts on Facebook. I’ve made it my decision that if a company has something to dispute over my personal life that they’ve discovered on Facebook well before I decided I wanted to interview with them, then that type of work environment is not the best for me in the first place. I want to be able to express who I am without fear of being ridiculed for things I do in my free time.

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In a brief article on Gizmodo by resident contributor Mario Aguilar, a brand new security system is detailed in brief. While this system is still in its infancy as a whole, much of the components that make up this system can be pieced together with more advanced technology in no time. Supposedly it’s only limitation is that “It can only scan faces within 30 degrees vertically or horizontally from the camera and the faces have to be at least 40 x 40 pixels in size.”

Remember the movie “The Minority Report” with Tom Cruise? There was a scene in particular that showed miniature cameras that were placed over digital billboards that scanned the faces of the passerbys and displayed relevant advertisements tailored to that person. Another instance was in the GAP of the future where a camera would scan the face of previous customers and remember their sizes and clothing preferences in the movie. The eerie thing about this system is that when it was displayed in the movie, audiences were enthralled but simultaneously frightened at the possibility of this technology; and now it is a reality.

Technology such as this surveillance system would mean that looking up an individual would take no more than a few seconds browsing through a database. These cameras can capture images in milliseconds and who knows where it will be stored and for how long. While I can understand that it would make catching criminals on the run much easier, I also see the potential for the governmental misuse of such technology and I think that if I want to stay off the government’s watch list, I should probably cease expressing my open fear of this new system 🙂

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In a public release of data from the silicon valley giant Facebook, interesting new information was published that tracked the seasonality of relationship formation. The company gathered information from 2010 and “looked at how different times of the year affect the beginning and ending of relationships”. The data revealed that the top four days of relationships to be formed fell around February 14-15 and December 24-25. The most popular day(s) for relationships to break up were towards the end of the week, possibly due to “[waiting] to end their old relationships in time to spend the weekend with friends or get back in the game with someone new”.

It fascinates me that social media has gotten to a point where not only is the data interesting, but it is very relevant in the way relationships are structured in modern society. Being in my particular age group, the generation that was raised with technology and social media as what will become our pastime, we are self-conscious of how others perceive us and how we are presented on the internet. If an individual is in an established relationship, it could be embarrassing if their relationship status would show up as single so suddenly. But do we really need information about when individuals are getting together and breaking up? Some may say yes, but many would also say no, regardless it is impressive that Facebook has been compiling this data and their presentation was a quick and informative read.

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There have been few assignments that I’ve received in my college career that excited me in any positive way prior and during their process, but these hypertexts have definitely been part of that group. I think it could have been due to the fact that I’ve been trained in HTML and became excited at the opportunity of a project where I could express myself through my abilities.

The personal hypertext was a fun assignment for me because I was able to share with other people my passion and hobby for glass art. It wasn’t challenging and it was fun to get back to working with HTML from not touching it for over a year. This project served as a good primer for my Podcast hypertext.

The Podcast hypertext was both fun and extremely stressful for me. I was to interview Phil Siegel for the video, but his availability was set for the Thursday before the Podcast was due. I was able to finish the interview and get home by 2 a.m. and bust out whatever I could for the hypertext. I was able to finish, but passed out and did not submit it until 4 hours after it was “due” and was marked late….Even though my assignment was finished and unmodified before the page was even supposed to be submitted, so I do not agree with my deduction for merely submitting the page at a later hour.

The analytical hypertext is still in progress and I will update a post accordingly with my reflection on that.

All in all, I’ve had a good experience working with these Hypertexts for this class and would recommend friends who are interested in both expanding their HTML skills while exploring internet-writing to take this course.

My podcast experience was actually enlightening in more than one way. Not only had I never documented a public space and venue for a class, but never have I had to dictate and speak in public (to myself). I would definitely say that this was the most difficult aspect for me just because I wasn’t familiar with narrating what I am physically seeing. It was enlightening to learn more about my peers and friends who are artists, particularly Phil Siegel, and because of this project I can say that I now have a a newfound respect for my friend Phil.

In regards to my editing choices and experience with the video, I did this because I am most familiar with this sort of media. For me, it would have been more of an inconvenience to simply upload an .mp3 of my Podcast to a site than to create what I did. I wanted to create a page that had similar aspects to my personal hypertext, but differentiated by small changes such as the background. The video itself was easy to film and edit as I have done several projects with iMovie and Final Cut Pro in the past. Believe it or not, but I ended filming for the project at 2am on Friday and edited the video in just 4 hours.

Any and every day of the week I would prefer a media-based assignment over a paper assignment because of my familiarity with media and software, whereas I dread translating my thoughts to text and a paper assignment.

http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/JFujioka/podcast-hypertext.html