How Technology Creates Opportunities For Entrepreneurs and Business

In my TINST 475 Entrepreneurship class, this topic was brought up and discussed. A technology my classmate Keith mentioned in class, that I also believe is a good, is video games. In today's society, video games are a major activity among adolescents and young adults especially in the First-Person Shooter (FPS) and Third-Person Shooter (TPS) genres. Games like Halo, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six, and Gears of War offer features such as online multiplayer that really enhance the gameplay of a game tremendously, not to mention it makes you want to get better at playing the game than your opponents.

This gets into the business side of the video game industry. If you have all of these elite players playing these elite games, you can begin to realize all of the possibilities an entrepreneur has in this industry. Hosting tournaments and providing sponsorship to these elite players are the two main activities an entrepreneur could provide. Not to mention the fact that you could get these tournaments shown on National television to further enhance your money-making business. Much is to be had in the video game industry!!

Steal This File Sharing Book : What They Won't Tell You About File Sharing

In my TINST 207 class, a group of six people presented on the book Steal This File Sharing Book : What They Won't Tell You About File Sharing by Wallace Wang. The overall summary about the book was it tells you how to go about downloading music, movies, and anything that is software online illegally.

They began by talking about Napster and that is was released in 1999, had over 26 million users in 2001, and had crashed in 2001 due to having a centralized network server, which every users on the software had to go through in order to download content from another user. They also talked about the pros and cons of Burning CDs. A pro is that you pretty much won't get in trouble for doing it because everyone practically does it. They then got into the pros and cons of File Sharing Networks. A pro is that it's easy to use; it takes a click of a button for you to get what you want. A con would be that the download speed on the network varies; so you might have to wait a LONG time before you get the content you want.

Against The Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

So in my TINST 207 class, a group of four Seniors at the UW Tacoma presented on a book called Against The Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob By Lee Siegel. They began by telling a little bit about the author's background. He is known as a person who is pretty much against the Internet and the World Wide Web.

They then continue to introduce summaries on the chapters in the book. One chapter was titled 'Bait & Switch' which talked about profits and idealism. He felt that the Internet was being sold as a convenience and people would neglect outside resources for information. A big point I got from the presentation was that the author 'believed information on the Internet is meaningless because it is constantly updated.' While this may be true in some sense, not every piece of information on the Internet is updated.

Group Presentation Synopsis

In my Living and Working in a Virtual World class taught by Andrew Fry , I'll be in the process of doing a group presentation on the book World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Richard Hunter. This book has fourteen chapter and since my group consists of seven people, we decided to each discuss two chapters in the book. The chapters I'll be discussing are Chapter 12 and Chapter 13.

Chapter 12 is titled 'War Without Secrets,' which pretty much discusses how communication in the military and in networks aren't as secure as they should be. It covers a lot more which you'll have to wait until presentation time. Also, Chapter 13, titled 'Digital Pearl Harbor,' talks about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attack on the World Trade Center and what a 'Digital' Pearl Harbor could do to America.

For more information on this presentation, come and check out my group mate Rebecca's Blog.

Scavenger Hunt Progression

In my TINST 207 class, we have to do an online scavenger hunt with a classmate. So far, we've done all the questions up to this question.

Virtual World

There isn't many places I'd want to go virtually. But one place I can think of is outer space. Journeying to outer space will most likely be an opportunity I won't be able to experience in the real world (unless they happen to invent a plane or jet in the future that can go to any place in the Solar System and come back in a reasonable time).

The feeling of going to another planet in the Solar System would be unforgettable and the trip of a lifetime.

Kevin Freitas & FeedTacoma

So last Monday in my Living in a Virtual World class, we had a guest speaker named Kevin Freitas, who is the creator of a website called FeedTacoma.com which pretty much pulls content around the web relating to Tacoma. His website is pretty innovative in the sense that the website updates constantly looking for sites with Tacoma in its [tags].

The features on this site are amazing. First off, there is a page on the site called 'Shop' which side-shops in Tacoma post items that they have for sale. If you choose to purchase any of the items, you can pick them up in-shop at that particular shop. Secondly, the 'Photo' and 'Video' page are cool as well. As stated in the previous paragraph, the site picks up photos and videos around the web with 'Tacoma' in its [tags] and sorts them into the appropriate page. With all of these cool features this site has, you'd think this site would have raked in so much money. Unfortunately, when Kevin created this site, he had no intention of making it a profitable website and has decided to keep it that way.