iTunes

iTunes is a digital media player application, introduced by Apple in 2000 for playing and organizing digital music and video files and has been changing ever since. Originally users were able to openly share any downloaded music file throughout the Internet. However, the free music was harming record sales, and iTunes implemented a Digital Audio AccessProtocol (DAAP) system in their 7.0 upgrade. The DAAP system allows sharing or streaming of music and other files between up to five users yet blocks those files from being saved to other users hard drives and from being burnt onto CDs.

With the invention of the iPod and iPhone, iTunes is the software that can sycronize a hard drive’s video and audio library to the iPod or iPhone everytime it is connected. Today, other affordances of iTunes include: podcasting, and buying music, television shows, music videos, iPod games, audiobooks, feature length films, and ringtones at the iTunes store. iTunes also automatically uses the Internet to find the name of the record and artist in order to organize downloaded files using the interactive audio CD database called Gracenote. The playlist feature also allows users to organize their music any way they choose. ITunes is able to read the songs frequently played by the user and has a Most Played list for easy access to favorite music.

A disadvantage of iTunes is that many people are able find a way to access free music and video files which can then be converted to their iTunes library and synconized with iPods or iPhones.

iTunes is free to download for many computer systems including Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP from Apple's website.

I would rate iTunes a 5 for it's ease of access, and overall availability and usefulness.

Facebook.com

By Tyler Endres

Facebook.com is a social networking web site, first introduced on February 4, 2004. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former Harvard student, who initially started Facebook as a hobby project. When it began, Facebook was only available to Harvard students. Within two months Facebook’s availability was quickly expanded to all Ivy League schools. Over the next year universities around the world were quickly added to the social networking web site. High schools and some large companies were eligible to join just about two years after the launch of the site. Today, the site has over 64 million active users and is the 7^th most visited site according to Alexa.

Some advantages of using Facebook include, giving friends, classmates, and co-workers a place to communicate with each other. Users are given the opportunity to decide what they want and don’t want to share, with users in their networks and their selected friends. Facebook is a one-stop site for sharing media, calendaring, blogging, communicating, sharing information, etc. Facebook.com is also available in a mobile version, which gives users access to the site anywhere using their cell phone.

As well as advantages, Facebook also has disadvantages. Sharing too much information could be a problem for some people. Other people say that using Facebook is just a waste of time. The site can also allow complete strangers to view someone’s profile which could have bad consequences for some users.

I believe that Facebook should be used within an organization as an informal means of communication for employees, managers, etc. It could allow an organization’s users to create relationships with each other, which would be harder to do without Facebook.

Overall, I would rate Facebook.com as 5 out of 5 on its usefulness because of its unique ability to connect people over the web.

Craigslist by Amanda Luckow

Craigslist is the new way to bring goods and services to those who need them, while avoiding the costs and effort associated with classified ads. Because it is more wide spread it makes it easier to match people’s needs. It has many more advantages than the common classified advertisement, and in some respects has simplified the process of exchanging goods, which EBay sought out to do. You can search the site under any of the fifty states and even narrow it down by county. Not only can you buy and sell stuff on Craigslist but you can also look for jobs, housing, activities, talk in discussion forums and find different services you may need. It even has a section for personals. Not many people are familiar with it yet but it is becoming more wide spread because of its easy access. When trying to buy something, you can see a description, the price, and pictures; similar to EBay. But that difference is that you meet up with the person selling the good instead of having it shipped. You know exactly what your getting and if your not satisfied you don’t need to worry about dealing with exchanging or returning something over the internet. There is no charge to post the listing which is also a good advantage; unless it is a job posting there is a small fee. A disadvantage of Craigslist is that you don’t always know the person who you are buying something from and if it is even legitimate. Anyone can post about an item or job. Most of the jobs are real but I have seen many that could have easily been typed by a seven year old the way that it was written. You should never go to someone’s house; you should meet them in a popular place to make sure you are safe. I think that Craigslist is a four because of how useful it is. Maybe one day people won’t need to have garage sales because they can so easily list it on the internet that it saves so much unnecessary time and effort. The only reason I believe it is not a five is because of safety but there is yet to be a case where it has played a negative role.

BlackBerry Smartphone

Research In Motion’s (RIM) design of the BlackBerry smartphone in 1999 has evolved to become the latest and most efficient communication technology for the international business world. The BlackBerry is most popular for its ability to send and receive e-mails anywhere and in real-time making them addictive. Recently the BlackBerry has been nicknamed the “CrackBerry” due to the ease of e-mailing and messaging.

An advantage to the BlackBerry is that it makes it much easier to stay in constant, direct communication with clients and colleagues when traveling outside of the office. This is made possible by integrating the user’s company e-mail account with their BlackBerry through software called, “BlackBerry Enterprise Server” (BES). BES allows wireless synchronization between BlackBerrys and applications like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. Additional features included on the phone besides quick e-mail access is a full QWERTY keyboard, text messaging, digital address book, calendar, calculator, notes, and the ability to set up meetings. There is also a thumbwheel on the side of the phone which enables easy navigation around the screen.

This new and exciting communication tool keeps users in constant contact and always in-the-know. Even in business meetings you can find users answering e-mails from their BlackBerrys. Not only in meetings are people messaging but while driving as well, which is not very safe. This device accompanies users everywhere they go causing them to become workaholics. The easy navigation and simple keyboard becomes addicting for users, causing longer work hours. Most recently, connectivity issues have left BlackBerry users without service causing many users that are dependent on the smartphone frustrating work days.

I rate the BlackBerry as a 5 for usefulness due to the fast communication it creates among users and organizations. The timely communication helps improve organizational communication tremendously.

For more information on BlackBerry devices visit the BlackBerry homepage at www.blackberry.com. Click on the following New York Times link to read more about Monday's BlackBerry Outage: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/technology/apee-rim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Lotus Notes

IBM’s Lotus Notes is a new and successful communication technology for many large companies and organizations. Lotus Notes is a client-server application that is mainly used for e-mail. That’s not all though! This program combines e-mail, calendar and scheduling capabilities, instant messaging, web conferencing (optional) and collaborative tools. These options allow fast and easy internal and external communication for many companies. One very effective and important tool on Lotus Notes is its scheduling capability. In order to schedule a meeting all you have to do is choose a date and time and then type in the names of the people invited to the meeting. After the meeting invitation is completed it is sent out to the people invited where they can then accept the invitation or decline. The program will even allow you to check your colleague’s calendars when scheduling a meeting to make sure the invitees are available. In addition to scheduling meetings within the office, Lotus has a centralized management of conference rooms. This enables the chairperson scheduling the meeting to see what rooms are available to have the meeting in. This easy scheduling tool avoids miscommunication and double booking of meetings in the same room. In addition, Lotus has one of the best security systems. According to Wikipedia, “Notes was the first widely adopted software product to use public key cryptography for client-server and server-server authentication and for encryption of data.” Lotus also enables users to forward e-mails to personal BlackBerries which can be set up by the company’s IT/IS department.

Some disadvantages to this software are that it is not easily assessable for the blind. Successful business people that are blind have a hard time navigating around Lotus Notes and cannot easily schedule meetings as well as see weather or not they are bcc’d on notes. Although, talking software can be used with Lotus it still makes it difficult to communicate to others efficiently.

I would rate Lotus Notes at a 4 for usefulness as a communication technology.

More information about Lotus Notes can be accessed through IBM’s website or by clicking on the following link: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus.

Paypal by Amanda Luckow

I chose Paypal for my new communication technology. It can be accessed at www.paypal.com. Many companies use Paypal in order to have secure transactions over the internet. While there are many different forms of purchasing items, with Paypal you can pay for online purchases, send and request money worldwide, track you’re online spending and accept credit cards. “PayPal acts as a middle man between the buyer and seller so that the seller never has to expose his payment information to the seller directly.”(westwind.com) You also have the ability of saving your credit card information for easy access any time you want to spend. A downside to Paypal is that it can only be used for web based purchases. You cannot use it for something that doesn’t involve the web and therefore if your business does offline sales it would be of little use. Another disadvantage is that they take a small percentage of each sale for the company. I would rate Paypal a 5 on its usefulness because you don’t have to worry about getting spammed by the seller and also if you end up having a dispute over an item Paypal will help you to settle it quick and efficiently.