Kate 101

HW9: Marketing

2006-11-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

When Professor Hoppe initially explained this homework assignment, my original intent was to use Facebook as my site since I had already done HW8 about it. However, over the break between Monday's class and Tuesday's due date, the Google group emails came pouring in. There seems to be two different fronts regarding this homework assignment and how to get the special 6 points, one rallying on the side of the initial suggestion, Wikipedia, and one calling for the use of Altavista as an alternate method that doesn't conform but bands together to get the points.

That in itself didn't make much sense to me, and I was a bit put off by wickedj7's Google Group email. I felt that he/she could have just simply put forth Altavista as an alterior suggestion should anyone like to do it instead of trying to put down everyone who agreed to work with Wikipedia. His/her language about conforming had haughty tone, as though the rest of the class were for some reason, morally wrong for choosing Wikipedia. I think in reality the effort to choose Wikipedia was to benefit all involved, as it expedited the process and helped us all get points that we all want.

After sifting through the Google emails, I was pretty set on using Wikipedia because it is one of my favorite websites already, and in addition, it would help me do the best I can on this homework assignment. Then I read the email from Drew Phillips, who also chose Wikipedia as his example for HW8. His post made a lot of sense to me. He did not put down either camp, but asked politely for both sides to act more maturely, getting rid of snide comments and crude language. This post made me interested in what he had to say, and so I checked out his blog, at the link above, and decided, with my own knowledge of the site, to use Wikipedia once and for all.

So, if you are reading this and haven't already, check out Wikipedia!

I don't see this exercise as having anything to do with conformity, but instead, with talking to each other and seeing how we can all help each other out. I think Professor Hoppe designed this homework with that in mind; I'm quite certain that he knew that, with all the communication tools we have at our disposal, we would find a way to communicate amongst one another, rally for a certain site, and help ourselves get the points. I'm sure he was hoping we would see how we network, how we talk to one another, and how we persuade others to help each other get the most out of this assignment.

HW 8

2006-11-13T17:32:00.000-08:00

The social website that I chose for this exercize is Facebook. I chose this site because it is one that is prevalent in most college students' lives. It helps us communicate with the new friends we meet at school as well as the old friends who we used to go to school with. Facebook allows you to "friend" people, which basically means you exchange links, much like "blog friends", but with Facebook, the other party must confirm your request before it is processed. Facebook provides a lot of useful information, which is all comprised in a user's profile. You can generally look up someone's name, age, hometown and on campus residency. All the information on Facebook is provided by the users themselves, so while information could sometimes be misleading, it can also be made as private as a user would like. Facebook makes the information useful instead of overwhelming by having a simple profile template that links the user's elements to other users who also list those elements. This makes it much easier for people to connect via interest, residence, and class year. For instance, in my "TV Shows" section of profile, the first program listed is Lost. If I click on Lost in my profile, Facebook offers me a list of my friends and other BU students who like Lost.

Facebook's chief competition is probably MySpace, another networking site. MySpace does much of the same things that Facebook does in terms of information, but MySpace is customizable, which sometimes makes it harder to interpret information on a specific page. One thing that MySpace does better than Facebook is MySpace Music. MySpace Music allows music artists, from hugely popular pop stars to hometown garage bands, to create profiles that give information about the artist as well as mp3 clips of some of their work. Facebook does not have a music component to its site, but if it took a clue from MySpace, it could perhaps help college bands to get off the ground with the crowd that they are targeting most.

HW6: Linking

2006-10-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

I just want to thank Jen for linking to me on her page. I also linked back to her on my page. :] Her link can be found in the sidebar under "Links".

Although, she remembered to do this assignment on time, and I forgot. :/ At least we get to drop the lowest homework!

HW 5: Google Analytics

2006-10-10T18:28:00.000-07:00

Last week in lab we all signed up for Google Analytics so that we could see how much traffic our blogs are getting. These are my results:

Date range	Visits	Page Views
10/4 - 10/10	2	2

HW 4: Shopping and Coffee

2006-10-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

I just did Homework 4. The two companies I chose were Starbucks and Nordstrom. At GW last year, Starbucks was fortunately/unfortunately? very close to my dorm. It lured me in with the temptation of warmth and sweets. Sounds nice, but the bad side was the high price in dollars and calories for a White Chocolate Mocha. Anyway, I'm still under the company's grasp today, so I figured I'd choose my favorite coffee vendor for this exercise. The other company I chose is Nordstrom, which is my favorite department store. It's consistently fashionable, it has the best shoe department, and the sales can be really awesome. I'm from New Jersey, where we love our malls, and the best mall by far is a mall that includes Nordstrom as one of its department store anchors. :]

The path between them is linked is strange. I hadn't heard of Weyerhaeuser and Kroger before this exercise, so I looked them up on Wikipedia. Weyerhaeuser makes paper and Kroger is apparently a supermarket. They must all be situated near the headquarters in Cincinnati though, because I have never ever seen or heard of a Kroger's on the East Coast. Federated Department Stores owns Macy*s and Bloomingdales and a few other stores, so it makes some sense that it would fit into a chain involving Nordstrom and Starbucks.

The randomness of the types of products made by these links led me to look at another factor: geography. The real link is that Kroger and Federated are both headquartered in Cincinnati, and Weyerhaeuser and Nordstrom are both situated in Washington. But so is Starbucks! It seems strange that with the two end companies being headquartered in Seattle, there is a relatively long path between the two.

HW3 Part III: The Hyperlink Image

2006-09-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

The last post was frustrating. For some reason, Blogger would not show my unordered list, so I had to make an ordered list. In addition, I made a second unordered list about the reasons why I chose the bookmarks, and that didn't show up either. :/

But moving past that, I can look forward to better things to come:

One of the best things to come has to be the premiere of Lost. Seriously, I'm addicted. It's a little scary, but wonderful at the same time. Everyone who has never watched an episode of Lost should definitely give it a try. Oh, you WILL be confused. But you will want to unconfuse yourself and thus watch more and more.

HW3 Part II: The Bookmarks

2006-09-27T17:18:00.001-07:00

So I signed into Ning and looked around at the class bookmarks. There was some stuff in there that was pretty cool; some of the sites I had already seen and some were new things I hadn't come across yet. I selected one of each:

Vogue

Overheard in New York

I chose these two sites for very specific reasons.

Vogue is by far my favorite magazine. So what if the material it covers is out of my price range right now. I'm hoping that my degree from BU will get me into a career track that will allow me to one day buy that $1000 Italian handbag! Just kidding. I just love Vogue's style. It's so sophisticated and up to date.

The second link intrigued me since I am in love with the city we call New York. I live close enough to it so that I can go there whenever I'd like when I'm home. The NJTransit train ride only costs $8 dollars round trip and takes 20 minutes. :] I also understand how crazy New York is, and how crazy the PEOPLE of New York are, whether natives or guests from around the globe. So I clicked on this link to see what kind of stuff was being overheard. One part made me extremely happy. If you scroll down to the section entitled "Wednesday One-Liners Think Globally, Act Locally" and read about the "Guido on Cell" in Ikea, Elizabeth...that's my home city! And to go one step further, my mom used to work at that IKEA! Which makes me laugh, because I can imagine the kind of people that are down there contrast greatly with the Scandinavian ambiance of IKEA.

So those are my two bookmarks, originally posted by my two classmates (I have no idea who they are outside of the Bookmarks site, mind you): Yasmin Solomon and Julia Glater, respectively.

HW3 Part I: The License

2006-09-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

So of course I left HW3 until the night it was due. My time keeps getting away from me. :/

Anyway, I got the license at right from Creative Commons. I chose the Non-Commercial Share Alike. I don't mind if people use my work for personal use- to help with homework, to make a joke, etc, I just don't like the idea of my material being sold somewhere halfway across the world in some form.

Language Resources

2006-09-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

As a foreign language student, and more specifically an Italian major, I know how frustrating it is to leaf through dictionaries to look up words or to retrieve a conjugation that you've already learned but have just forgotten.

So I am very happy that I discovered Verbix: http://verbix.com/webverbix/. This free online conjugator will help you out a lot when you've forgotten the first person future tense of essere or the 3rd person plural form of ser. It features a pretty good amount of languages too.

Also, for any Italian students that may be out there, I want to let you know about Garzanti: http://www.garzantilinguistica.it/. When I did my first year at GW, I had an Italian professor who told us that a lot of online translators are horrible, but this Italian dictionary is pretty spot-on. The dictionary works between Italian and English and vice versa, and also Italian and French and vice versa. It's a great resource and you should sign up if you're studying Italian or are just curious about the language.

Allora, ciao. :]

Introduction.

2006-09-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

Of course I left this assignment until the last possible hour (well, hour and a half) that I could. I've tried to tell myself that I would break my procrastination habits from last year, but I've already put that off, thus trapping myself in the circle of addiction once again.

It's the worst when things are simple. I knew that it would be easy to set up an account at the lab with the help of the technicians, and even easier to register for Blogger. So I kept telling myself "I'll do it in between these classes when I have a spare hour" "I'll do it tonight while I'm already online doing other things" and other promises like that. And look, so much talk of the future and little doing until I really had to.

Of course it took me a few minutes to think of a title and a username. I'm pretty indecisive when it comes to labeling myself like that. In addition, I didn't have a specific topic to which I wanted to devote this blog (not as of now, at least) so I chose a generic and fairly dull title. In my mind, it may be ambiguous and commonplace, but at least now anything I write about can fall under it.

And now, I'm starting to use this as a tool for procrastination. I should've stopped a paragraph ago and gone on to other work! With that realization, my post concludes.