Is a Virtual Community Really a Community

What is a Virtual Community? Virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially overcome geographical boundaries and political will to pursue common interests or goals. I want to discuss the advantage and disadvantage of Virtual Community. Advantage - Internet communities offer the advantage of instant information exchange, which means we cannot do in a real communities. This allows more people to participate in activities at their home, such as: shopping, paying bills, looking for topical information.

User’s online communities can also access to thousands of thematic discussion groups, where they can form professional relationships and access to information in various categories such as politics, support technical, social activities and entertainment. Disadvantage - Although instantaneous communication means fast access, but this also means that the information posted is not reviewed for accuracy before. Furthermore, Identification of individuals who are kept anonymous so that ordinary people use virtual communities to live a fantasy life under the guise of a human being.

Overall, the world is rethinking human interaction through the use of social networking. So Virtual Community has a lot of fun but also more unstable and complex. In my opinion, Technology is threatening to dominate the life of humanity, and as we increasingly lose "humanity". By causing the illusion that social networks are helping people communicate and connect with each other more easily, in fact we are becoming isolated real-world interactions between people, in the form a virtual-reality space that is essentially nothing more than a simulation of the real world deformities.

Dot.com to Dot.bomb

The collapse of Internet companies (dot.com) is an economic event in the last months of 2000. Dot.com economists are seen as a major financial failure, particularly in the U.S., and they also call is dot.bomb. The dot.com was created starting from 1996. By 1999, many dot.com appear almost daily. Period 1997-1999, all linked to the Internet what are investors hunt. They rushed to buy the dot.com shares without regard to the actual value, ignoring the current losses for the next few years expect to benefit hundreds of times. The fever was stimulated by information from the market forecast, from the securities analyst in information technology (IT) IDC, Gartner, Forester Research, etc. But, not any tech company became a Microsoft as many small investors believe in the promising development of the dot.com.

However, the collapse of the dot.com only a small part of the entire Internet economy, only the pattern online retail B2C (business to consumer) collapsed while the real model  business B2B (business to business) still works well for many companies, large corporations use the Internet to reduce billions in operating costs and serve customers better. The important lesson learned is not to use the Internet to operate a traditional business, but must know how to use the Internet changed the nature of business.

Disintermediation

What is Disintermediation? Based on the definition from Techopedia, "Disintermediation cuts out the middleman. By using the Internet, companies and even manufacturers can deal directly with users or end consumers, which is a significant factor in decreasing the cost of servicing customers. The high market transparency often enables the buyers to pay less as they deal directly with the manufacturer, bypassing the wholesaler and the retailer." In my opinion, can eliminate the intermediary of time, people and distribution channels. By providing customers, partners and employees direct access to information, you can give them full control of the information requested and received. Clearly, if the current ordering procedure of the company include the use of an employee to enter orders, the automation of this process can eliminate human intermediaries.

An interesting fact is that in some cases, the Internet has created the intermediate goods. Mediation is a means of eliminating the middleman: It is an additional mediator to facilitate easier for business. EBay, the online auction house, is an example of intermediate goods. EBay has no products, or goods storage warehouse. Those who want to sell goods to register with eBay. Those who want to buy something on eBay will have to see what items are offered for sale. Without services like eBay, buyers and sellers are very difficult to meet. That's why eBay add for intermediate goods purchasing process.

Why would you NOT by online

This is a very interesting question that I need to answer. So I am going to ask myself, "Why would I NOT by online?" I decide to choose Facebook as a largest online social networking in the world now. There are so many reasons that I want to discuss that I would not using Facebook barely. The first reason is Facebook turn us into an indifferent ones. I often see brothers and sisters, aunts, friends, or even parents on Facebook, Instagram every day and I think that's enough. The second reason is on Facebook, you can "expand" but cannot "go deep" in the relationship. Facebook can bring "large number" of the relationship but its quality is that no one dared to make.

The next reason is Facebook addictive, it is undeniably true. Facebook almost made users that never satisfied and always want more: friends, fame (virtual), like, share, comment, followers, etc. As sticking with Facebook, people are increasingly "hysterical" because of its. Most of the information on Facebook are spam, the status of strangers, and information about events that do not have any practical meaning to your life. Moreover, I really realized that every time I surf Facebook is really wasting my time.

There are a few reasons to discuss why would I NOT by online, in this case is Facebook. These things are come from my opinion. It's up to you.

A Visit From Brian Forth - SITECRAFTING

Again, we had learned so many things from our guest speaker, Brian Forth, who comes from the company SITECRAFTING on Monday July 4th. During one hour of guest speaking, we knew a lot of things about Brian Forth as well as his company. The first thing was that Brian introduced himself. Before he became a CEO of SITECRAFTING, he was in Film or Philosophy from his college major. Brian also mentioned that he wants to become an Elementary School Teacher to teaching fifth grade.

The second thing was Brian talked about his company and what his company is doing now. His company is located at three location such as Tacoma, Spokane, and Olympia. His company basically is Web Design and Web Development which are provided server and products services. They are hired some graphic designer to design and develop his company product to customers. Brian's company also has Data Center and a great service that supporting and taking care customer who got a big problem when server goes down.

The last thing Brian mentioned about SEO. What is SEO? "Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website on organic ("natural" or un-paid) search engine result pages (SERPs), by incorporating search engine friendly elements into a website." Furthermore, Brian's company is using Drupal and WordPress to design and develop website. Since we did not have enough time, that's why I could not ask any question that related to Mobile Application.

A Visit from Chris Richardson - IID (InternetIdentity)

There was a great thing when we had our guess speakers who from a company that is called Internet Identity. One of our guess speakers was Chris Richardson. During one hour of discussion in class we had been learned a lot of things about their company. Actually, they are basically a network company. I just remembered one thing when they said their company are working with some company like Credits Union. Their company is protecting customer transaction such as phishing, dos, etc.  They also talked about their solution to solve network problems and attacks.

There was another great thing when they showed us a website that is called map.ipviking.com (http://map.ipviking.com/). This website is really cool because we can see the Attack Origins, Attack Targets, Attacks and Attack Types which are included some basic things such as country, service, and port. Since we did not have enough time that's why I really want to ask some questions to them. My concern and questions were related to something such as the problem with information security requirements on computer networks, security problems in the TCP/IP network - security policy for the network TCP/IP, security services like Authentication Service, Peer Entity Authentication, Data Origin Authentication, Access Control Service, Data Confidentiality Service, Data Integrity Service, and more.

How to Create a Simple Web Page With HTML

<html>
<head>
<title>My Web-page</title>
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<body bgcolor="#00BFFF">
<marquee>Welcome to Living and Working in a Virtual World.</marquee>
<img src="http://www.wikihow.com/skins/common/images/wikiHow_logo_5.gif"></img>
<p>I am so happy when I am taking this quarter from Dr. Fry. Because I have been learning a lot of things from my instructor as well as our guest speakers.</p>
</body>
</html>