Financing Online

Over the years, online banking has gotten so easy that people can do loans, withdrawals, deposits, and transfers on their bank's website. Some might question why people would embrace this idea with the types of risks over the Internet such as phishing and hacking. Here is why I think so:

Security - Honestly, if you are going to allow people to do their banking online, it's a given for banking companies to have security on their websites to prevent such risks as phishing and hacking. Without security, online banking wouldn't be very safe to do.

Convenience - You can access the Internet from pretty anyplace that has a computer. People could just wake up in the morning, get on their computer, and get on their bank's website and do their banking without even leaving their house.

I'm one of those people that does their banking online because of the security and convenience it provides.

Not Purchasing Online

The Internet has many Sites that offer online shopping for virtually everything. However, the thing I would never purchase online would be a vehicle such as a car, boat, or plane.

It may seem obvious to some why you wouldn't purchase a vehicle online. But I'll go ahead and explain. For one, the shipping cost would be EXPENSIVE!! Not to mention that if you wanted to purchase a vehicle from Europe, the shipping cost would definitely be in the hundreds of dollars. Another reason would be the condition of the vehicle. Just because it may say that it is in Brand New Condition may not necessarily mean it's in that kind of condition. Lastly, I'd have to say the return policy. Let's say when you got the vehicle and decided that the insurance for it would be too expensive to handle or you decided that the interior wasn't like what you expected to see, chances are if you want to ask for a refund, it's going to cost you more than the shipping return fee.

Purchasing a vehicle online is a no brainer for me because of all the risks/cons stated above. Even if I considered wanting to purchase a vehicle online, I'd only go to Craiglists since I could see this vehicle in person and make my decision even better.

Vanity Search

This ought to be fun!! What possible search sites and search engines could possibly have any background information on me? Let's find out.

I began my search on Google and boy, what a feast. The first few results that came up were a wiki page on Wikipedia about a guy with my first and last name who was an Australian former rugby league player, another guy with my first and last name's blog, and another guy with my first and last name's website dedicated to showing off his different styles of art. Even when you go through the first few pages brought up by my name, you won't anything about me on Google.

I continue on to another popular search engine known as Yahoo! Search and pretty similar results that I got on Google showed up: The Australian former rugby league player with my name, another guy with my name's blog, and another guy with my name's website dedicated to showing off his different styles of art. So pretty much, two busts on finding myself online so far.

As I moved my search to a search site called Intelius, which is said to have a lot of background information, I was really counting on this site to having some type of information on me. Surprisely, NO!! However, when I typed in my dad's name in the search, I was able to find some pretty detailed information Intelius says they have on him. Scary!!

I decided to finish my search on this other search site my College instructor happened to tell us about called peekyou.com, which is supposely said to find SOMETHING about you. I figured it was only a matter of time before some kind of search site would find me and show me on the first page of there search. This site happened to pick up on my MySpace account, which has a picture of me. However, it was wrong about my age being 19 as I turned 20 around a month ago.

Wow. I'd say it is pretty difficult nowadays in today's technological world to not have associated yourself somehow on the Internet be it MySpace, Facebook, a Blog, or a Forum Post. Unless you totally avoid the Internet. That'd be crazy!!

The Future Of Newspapers

Wow. What a topic this was in class today. With the growing number of web pages out there dedicated in hosting and finding news articles of any kind in the world, it's not hard to imagine what the future of newspapers will become. Imagine now that by 2015, nearly all of today's newspapers in the world will have converted to the Internet side of things. Let's not forget about the other kinds of publications out there: Books, Magazines, Journals. Some of these are available right now on the Internet, but don't count on all of them to completely convert. People still enjoy getting reading material in the paper form.

E-mail vs. Postal Service

What can I say...During the discussion of this topic in class, a lot of similarities and differences were brought up. Here were some of the key topics discussed:

• Addresses - There are obvious differences between an e-mail address and a postal service address. But I'll go ahead and type it out. e-mail addresses consist of a username at (@) a domain name (ex. johndoe@msn.com) while a postal service address consists of a name, the person's address, city, state, and zip code.

• Weight - Weight was an interesting topic to be had in class that brought up some good points. First, e-mail is weighed in based on a bytes scale whereas postal mail is weighed in on a metric scale. Second, in the postal service world, the heavier the mail, the higher the cost is for mailing it out while through e-mail, it doesn't cost a penny to send an e-mail regardless of content size (The only cost I can think of is the cost of your e-mail space).

• Packages - Lastly, packages also was a rather interesting topic to bring up between the two types of mail. In terms of e-mail, a package would pretty much be what you would call an attachment on an e-mail, in which the attachment could be anything from a text document to a music file. I suppose in a postal service environment, a package could be anything from a Music CD or a book.