My professor gave us a lecture on the "dinosaur age" of past, and current, big technological corporations. It was kind of cool to see how a company could be so big at one point in time and then suddenly vanish within a few years. Or, on the opposite side, how a small company that not very many people knew about could conquer its competitors and grow to be number one. Business is a very vicious world to be in. Only people who are flexible and adaptable can survive in such a wild and fast-paced environment. It's important to keep that in mind when starting a business. I think now in the modern time any product you make is like your business because there are so many different companies and ideas out in the world that just lowering your prices in comparison to your competitor's isn't enough anymore. To really get a business going, it needs to be about something that is really different that totally stands out. Even movie making is like a business because there aren't very many "new" movies anymore. most of the movies are just taking ideas and concepts from other/older movies, so they're becoming predictable. That might be why the movie industry is starting to lose money now. Only movies that are completely different can make huge bucks for Hollywood, and I learned from class that's exactly what business today is like too.

We watched the documentary "StartUp.Com" in my virtual world class and I absolutely loved it. You got a chance  to see how the individual characters behaved and reacted in certain events. You got to see the strong bond between the two main guys/ best friends and how the value of their friendship grew despite all the bad that was being done to their company. You even got to see the "human moments" throughout the film, like when Kaliel's mate was going on about wanting a dog but he wouldn't even give in to the thought. They never got what they want right when they wanted it, which makes for a great entertaining film. Now, other than just analyzing the individuals and their relationships to each other throughout the film, I also found the business concept side to it facisnating as well. In fact, the bonds between the characters is what weakened and broke their future successful business, and I think if they were both more focused on their business than their personal lives that they could have made millions from it. Instead, one friend was more emotional and, for lack of a better word, was some what of a slacker as well as an individual who couldn't make up his mind, and because of his personality he didn't get his job done right. I think it wouldn't been better if Kaliel was just let him go and said they could still be friends and he hired someone else in his place. It was cool to see what businesses go through in order to be successful and how human the founders of that business could be.

A community is a gathering/ group of people who share a common interest in something. A virtual community is pretty much the same thing. It's like a club, where there are members who join and they meet up and share their information, new ideas, or just hang out. A virtual community is like a club. One excellent example of this is Facebook. If you want to be a Facebookian, you need to join and then you can do pretty much whatever you want on it. You could post pictures of yourself, look at other people's videos, or just chat to your friends and family. But within a Facebook community, there are even smaller communities. There could be a yoga community where people can go and check out the next yoga meetings or watch new yoga videos. It's kind of like joining one club to join another club. Or atleast that's what I think a community is.

I think I've started buying things on the internet just recently in the past year, mainly because it's cheaper to get textbooks on internet shopping sites like eBay than in a bookstore. I've bought video games, textbooks, and even digital services like Microsoft works through the internet. It's a lot easier to buy things from a store than through a computer because you'll have it right away, you know exactly what you're buying, and you don't have to pay extra for shipping. The problem with buying things online is that you can never if what you're getting is what you want. For example, if you buy a textbook online, you can never know if all the pages are there, if the pages are readable, or if even in one piece. Even if the seller says it's as good as new, how can you be sure? You're definition of brand new can be different from the seller's. One thing, in particular, that I wouldn't want to buy from the internet, unless I absolutely have to, is clothes. I like to wear my clothes, check out the sizes, see if they look nice, and if they look good on my before I buy them. But you can try them on through the internet. You can only see the design of the clothes. Will it look good on me? Will it make me look fat? Is it clean? Does it fit? These questions will only be answered once it reaches your doorstep in roughly 3-15 business days. My biggest issue is the size. Similar to what I mentioned before, the seller's idea of small could be much bigger or smaller than my idea of small. It's a lot riskier to buy clothes online than what people assume.

Derek Young came to my virtual class today to talk to us about his experiences in technology. I thought it was funny how he was completely unprepared of what he wanted to talk to us about but my professor guided him along the conversation as well as many other students in my class which was neat. He kind of went backwards and forwards in time with the publishing and business side of the internet, so it was a little confusing and hard to keep up at times. But it was nice to hear about the beginnings of the internet and its impact on earlier businesses.

We were given a step-by-step assignment that taught us how to create an HTML page. I've already made a web page before and have some previous experience with programming, so it was a nice refresher. But I took it a step further and, because the instructions were simple enough, I let my little sister take a look at the assignment and try it out. She had a lot of fun with it. Some of the programming codes were difficult for her to get, like changing background colors, inserting an image, or making words move across the page, so I had to help her and guide her through it. It was fun though. It even got her more interested in programming too. The reason I'm pointing this out is because it made me realize how much technology has influenced the newer generation. My sister's in sixth grade but she got the hang of making HTML web pages instantly because she already has been exposed to so much technologies in her life. It took a lot longer for me to get the hang of coding when I was first learning it because I didn't play video games or do anything with computers until I was kindergarten. It's pretty neat how fast humans can adapt to something depending on how much they've been exposed to it.

In my virtual world class, we had a "scavenger hunt". It was a lot like what most scavenger hunts are like. You are given a list of things to find or do and you are given a specific time limit to check off those things. But unlike most scavenger hunts, ours asked us to answer a list of questions using the internet. It was amazing how many things you can find on the internet, a complete stranger's family. It's a little scary too. If I ever win the lottery or marry a movie star, someone could easily find my personal information, like my bank account, and take all my money. Or someone could find where I live, stalk me, then kidnap me for ransom. It's cool that we can learn about anything anytime, but it's a huge danger for our privacy too. The scavenger hunt we did was a real eye opener.