Social networking sites do not enable more friends

An Economist article (http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13176775) from a couple of weeks ago highlighted something about Facebook and other social networking sites that I believe is quite true: these sites are primarily for keeping in touch with acquaintances and have no effect on the actual number of close friends. While the number of "friends" on Facebook averages around 120 the actual number of close friends with whom people have frequent conversations is between 6-8. What does this actually mean? First, as I pointed out earlier social networking sites are primarily for keeping in touch with acquiaintances. Second, is that most social networking sites inaccurately use the word friend. A lot of the people who are listed as my friends are really more acquiantances. Very few people on my Facebook friend list would I go if I had serious problems. This isn't to say that I don't get along with people on my friend list or have something against them. We just aren't close friends - and that's okay. A lot of people have gotten fixated on the idea of having lots of friends for absolutely no reason. I think in a lot of cases people have lots of friends on Facebook either because they aren't very selective of who they consider friends or acquiantances or they have low self esteem and need to see that they have lots of friends to make themselves feel better.

Testing is the key

Tuesday's class was about internet viruses and malware and it reminded me of health class in junior high when we talked about STD's. The structure of both classes really was very similar.

• Step 1: Scare people about how bad Internet viruses or STD's are to your health
  
• Step 2: Inform how you can prevent viruses (i.e. virus checker, firewalls or condoms)
• Step 3: Avoid risky behavior (i.e. don't go to sites or open suspicious emails
  

Aside from this comparison I will say Tuesday's lecture brought up a much more important point that companies have to think through their data management policies. This can have far reaching implications from who has access to view what data but also to how files should be named. Without having a standard group to oversee data management the ability to identify where files are located or protect data from being used improperly becomes very difficult.

Welcome to Second Life Chad Mistwalker!

Second Life Sucks! Without any doubt the time I spent on second life was a complete waste (other than providing material for my blog and the homework assignment that I have to write).

While some may object to may harsh language to describe their favorite internet pastime I have to say that second life is about the most boring thing I have ever seen. Lets just start with the little fact that nothing ever seems to load correctly in second life (see picture to the left). This looks like some real cutting edge graphics to me. I can't even tell what I'm looking at! Overall I'd have to say that I don't think I'm ever going to use Second Life again and I'm going to be deleting the program off of my computer ASAP.

What's the deal with Blogging, Twitter, and 25 Random Things About Me?

From the title of my blog you may assume that I'm about to go into a Jerry Seinfeld-esq comic bit about blogging and all other manner of sources of random (and often useless) bits of information that comes out of people's heads. Instead I'm going to write a bunch of stuff that may be loosely connected to highlight the problem that many of these technologies have created. The internet has improved people's lives in many ways such as providing current events immediately from around the world, real-time stock quotes, and funny videos about kittens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtX8nswnUKU). The problem is most people use blogs and the other ilk to spew bits of information that are so trivial and in most cases stupid (my blog is included in this analysis) that it destroys the usefulness of these technologies. Why on Earth would I need to know that someone is going to the grocery store or the reason they don't like the color orange. The 25 Random Facts about you is the peak of absolute stupidity. It is reflection of our society that people feel the urge to disclose surprisingly private facts about themselves to the world.

Still thinking of a title

After reading the more current issue of The Economist online I came across an interesting article (http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109804) about how Amazon's Kindle and competing products could rekindle (yes I did intentionally use that word) the lagging newsprint and magazine industry. To me this makes a lot of sense. I don't read the newspaper often unless I have nothing else to read. It's quite cumbersome to read a newspaper in cramped spaces and you end up getting newsprint on your hands. Ever since I've gotten a Blackberry I've been reading a lot of news and reading magazine articles while I ride the light rail. I can very easily see how a product like the Kindle or even the iPhone could help to provide major newspapers like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal a whole group of new customers. As the Economist article points out, cellphone users pay for lots of trivial extras like ring tones or wallpapers so it does make sense to me that they would pay to have magazine and news paper content on their phones as well.

Enterprise Systems

Last class we began talking about Enterprise Systems and the move to having a common database architecture for all (or most) applications used in an company. This really was quite interesting to me because at my last job one of my last projects was getting human resources data from multiple data sources to merge into one database. I worked on this project for an employer who had hundreds of thousands of employees and retirees that in many cases became part of the company as a result of acquisitions. Due to the sheer size of the employee workforce and the complexity of all of the different rules that applied to the different employee populations managing all of them in a database was extremely difficult. As a result of this complexity most of the work in estimating the costs of employee benefits was handled in Microsoft Excel. The trade off with using Excel for analysis because of complexity was that it took much more time to do almost any time of analysis.

A Day in the Life of a CIO

On Thursday the CIO of Mortenson Construction came to our class and gave a lecture on the impacts of technology on the construction industry and some insight on what a CIO actually does. One of the most interesting aspects of his lecture was on software that was able to digitize architectural blueprints and create 3D models. These models can then be used to identify conflicts with electrical wires and water pipes saving Mortenson time.

Another interesting comment that the CIO made was that Mortenson would not purchase new technology unless it solved an actual business need. This comment made a lot of sense to me because it is essentially the same premise when starting a new business. If the product or service does not solve a customer pain point then it is probably not a business worth entering.

I did have some questions regarding how Mortenson calculates ROI on new technology. Experience at my old jobs as shown that documenting actual benefits of implementing new technology is usually very difficult.