Linked In! What does it mean?

LinkedIn is a platform for building professional networks. It provides a tool called LinkedIn Maps to be able to visualize connections in your network graphically. I have presented a graphical representation of my connections in LinkedIn below:

The blue and the orange nodes combined represent my connections at BYU, which largely dominate my LinkedIn network. This may partly be due to the fact the I started using LinkedIn only after my sophomore year in school. Even within the BYU network, my circle of connections within Computer Science Department (orange nodes) and that within the community of students from Nepal (blue nodes) are quite distinct. Apart from this, the circle of connections I made at Jive Communications (green nodes), a company that I currently work for, is completely separate from the rest of my professional network. 

You might ask if this graph tells anything about me. I believe that our interactions in social and professional spheres tell a lot about us. This graph is a representation of my interactions with the people in my professional network. It is fascinating as well as useful to see how this graph evolves over time because this graph somehow defines who I am.

General Conference Twitter experience

I actively participated in the tweeting experience during the first session of the General Conference on Saturday (04/06). I have mixed feelings about the experience. There were times when I thought I would rather have just listened to the speaker and paid more attention. Other times I felt I got more with the tweets I was following than I would have otherwise. There were several re-tweets that were unnecessary and distracting as they didn't add any personal thoughts or insights to what was already said. I later learned a way to turn off the re-tweets from showing up in the feeds which made the experience a tardy bit better. But there were still a lot of unnecessary redundant tweets. The flow of the tweets was so rapid that I couldn't keep up with reading all the tweets. But I would still say that the overall experience was fun. I have used twitter for a while now but this experience was unique and educational in many ways.

Video game addiction

Video games are getting complex, detailed, and compelling to a growing number of audience. With better graphics, more realistic characters, and greater strategic challenges, it is less surprising that most teens love to play video games than hang out with friends or play physically intensive sports. Video games can be very addictive such that players often start neglecting their parents, friends, work, and school. Though video game addiction is not medically recognized as a disorder, there is increasing evidence of people facing severe consequences due to video game addiction. Relationships and family lives are affected greatly by such addiction. Studies show that children with video game addiction exhibit behaviors similar to pathological gamblers. Use of game for increasing amounts of time isn't the only symptom of gaming addiction. Repeated, unsuccessful efforts to control or stop gaming is another symptom that can help identify this problem. Identifying these symptoms early will allow us to take preventive steps early enough to be effective.  Treatment of video game addiction is similar to that of any addiction. Counseling and behavior modication can greatly help in the process of rehabilitaion of a video game addict.

Piracy Vlog

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Here Comes Everybody

"Here Comes Everybody", a book by Clay Shirky, is a book about advancements in technology. With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us. We have begun crowdsourcing news and innovations. Technologies like cell phones and internet are constantly changing the world. With the internet, people now have the power to express their opinions and share their views to millions of people instantly. People are more connected today than during any other generation of human existence. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have made this possible. People share ideas on a large scale today, in online communities. Our lifestyle has changed in so many ways with internet and smartphones that we cannot imagine going back to any previous era of technology. But as Voltaire once said, "With great power comes great responsibility" (no this was not a creation of Marvel comics). We now have to find the most awarding ways of utilizing the power of today's technologies. We should try to contribute back to the online communities like Wikipedia, from where we harness our information and knowledge. In other words, we need to try to become producers rather than just stay as consumers in this information age.

Technology and the Church

With the development of technology, people have harnessed its power in different aspects of their lives. Computers, cell phones, and the internet have changed the way we learn, think, and share our beliefs. The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have felt the influence of technology in the lives of members of the Church. The church uses technology to manage member records, assets, and finance etc. We now have easier ways to search and find past talks from conferences given by Church leaders. Similarly, there are online versions of scriptures that aid us in researching topics efficiently when we ourselves are preparing to give talks. The Church has emphasized that although technology is not inherently good or evil, it can be used to further good or evil purposes. It is our job as members of the Church to use the technology to share the Gospel and fulfill Lord's purpose.

Open Source

Open source environment provides the competitive advantage over closed source environment. There are very few companies who do not use any type of open source software in their infrastructure. This revolutionary model of software development has been embraced by many of the largest companies in the software industry. Open source development is a better way of building software, one reason being that more people are involved in solving the problems. Although open source is a better way of developing software than close source, there are some guidelines for creating good open source softwares. "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" has listed about 19 guidelines for doing just that. One among them,"Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)" seems noteworthy.

Wasteful Patents

The problem of excessive patent protection is at present best illustrated by the software industry. Some patent protection provides an inventor with more insulation from competition than he needed to have. For example, Apple's design patent, titled, "Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface" gives Apple the exclusive rights to the page turn in an e-reader application. This, along with several other patents that Apple has acquired in the last few years, doesn't seem like a truly unique idea. Such patents only encourage patent trolls that seek excessively broad patents to pursue either a large tech company for a substantial payment or choose thousands of small tech companies as their prey, seeking smaller “license” payments. In any case, this kind of patents in software industry seem to hamper rather than encourage innovation. 

Digitizing Family History

Family history and genealogy records had been difficult to search, share, and verify before the advent of online family history tools. Recent burst of family history in information technology has made data-mining of genealogy easy and efficient. Many people have increased their efforts to build up their family tree with use of technology, especially the World Wide Web. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has inspired people to get involved in this divine purpose. Learning about our ancestors can bring perspective and understanding to our own life. FamilySearch.com is a website publicly available to enhance this divine cause. There are more resources added everyday in the internet to help build family trees and learn about our personal history. All of us should utilize these resources to explore our genealogy.

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Time to revisit Facebook Privacy Settings

Facebook has now unveiled its Graph Search tool, which turns the personal information people have shared on facebook into a powerful searchable database. "With Graph Search, you can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you've shared with them, including content set to Public. That means different people see different results," Facebook said on the page. With this new powerful search, your friends and employers can discover things you thought were private. That's why this is a very good time to review your privacy settings and go through your data on Facebook to make sure you're not sharing anything publicly that you wish you weren't. Facebook has done a good job of explaining what their privacy and security settings are when you are looking at it, but you still have to go through it. At the very least, you may want to go through photos that you are tagged in and untag the ones you don't like or think are inappropriate.

The discovery of 75 cent Hacker

Cliff Stoll, in "The Cuckoo's Egg",  begins an investigation that ends up changing the intelligence community. His extensive testing and experiments reveals not only an unauthorized access, but also the flaws of computer security. He studies methods, data paths, and the signals through an electronic maze that eventually leads him to the "Hunter". Stoll's diligence and thoroughness in his work is mesmerizing. I enjoyed the part where he accounts for six-second-time delay between data transmission and reception, and the way he finds the three missing seconds.

I think this book talks about very important issues on computer security. The author has successfully warned us on rapid development of computer softwares and their vulnerabilities. We need to test security issues on any software before we embrace it. This will help reduce the chances of inconsistencies and likelihood of software hacking. Hacking, and especially internet security is a major issue these days. This reading makes us aware of some potential problems that are related to internet security.

In the end, the author gives some of the best arguments as to why unauthorized access to computers is a serious crime. As a scientist, he understands how all benefit from the free flow of information and mutual trust.

Women in Computer Science

Designing, implementing, debugging, and optimizing are what computer scientists do. It requires a lot of patience and determination to remain focused on projects when they keep you in your workstation for a number of hours. It is very difficult to handle this pressure, especially for women, who generally need a social life. I don't mean that women lack focus, but they generally like social interactions also. Another important thing which has kept women away from computer science is computer games. Game makers have focussed on targeting their games towards men. Despite attempts of some companies to create computer games for women, they have never been hugely successful at attracting women in computer  games. This notion has created male dominance in computer science. But these notions about computer science have to change to attract more women towards this major.

Microsoft pushing too hard

There are multiple reasons why Microsoft failed in its recent release of Surface Computers. The so called "new class of PC" was probably a hype because Microsoft made too many compromises to get it to the market soon. The new Surface Tablet is thicker & heavier than the previous one and provides only about 4 hours of battery life. In some ways Microsoft was trying to get ahead of the technology today but got too ahead of itself in the process. The competition in the technology sphere is understandably unnerving, which forced Microsoft to act fast and ambitiously. The initial release of Surface has been a failure but it is just a glimpse of what the future is going to look like. It is just a matter of time before we have the feature rich, bug free Surface tablets on our laps.

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Smartphone addiction

Do you feel you are over-reliant on your phone? Do you sometimes feel it vibrating when it really isn't? Do you calculate 13x4 on your phone? Do you remember anyone's phone number that in case you lost your phone you could call? My point is that we are using our smartphones the wrong way and there are ways we can improve our intelligence and not just our phone's by simply using it right. Try removing all the notifications you don't need. Those are just distractions. We use phones these days more for texting than calling. Did you know that texting is more dangerous than driving drunk? We already have too many sources of distractions in modern cars. Keeping those distractions to a minimum will help us drive more safely. A smarter way to use a smartphone would be to use voice commands to check directions or even send text messages. Use Siri on newer iPhones. If you use Andoroid, you got a lot of options. So start being smarter about your smartphones people. Remember, technology is awesome, but it’s often addictive.

Technology: Good or Bad?

Technology like most other human inventions has a negative and a positive side. I agree with Neil Postman in that both sides of the affect have to be questioned. But I also believe that the negative effects are the consequences of the actions of those few people who choose to do so. We cannot blame just the technology in this matter because it’s the conscience of the humans who try to harm the society that is to blame. Recently people have been talking about privacy and piracy issues brought by the evolving internet. But we cannot just forget about the benefits we are receiving from the internet and merely focus on the negative side to deem it bad for society. The benefits we have received from the development of internet are far more than negative things brought by it. In conclusion, it is human action that is defining advantage or disadvantage of new technology. We should check our behavior rather than complain about technology.