Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

By: Billy Thacker

Jeff Bezos is the founder, president, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and chairman of amazon.com

Amazon Logo

Background

Bezos presenting Amazon Kindle

Jeffery Bezos showed an interest in science and engineering during his youth and took classes at the University of Florida during high school. Later, he studied at Princeton University and earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. After graduation, he worked on Wall Street and was eventually was employed by Bankers Trust and D.E. Shaw & Co. In 1995, he opened Amazon.com which has become the largest online retail store and made Bezos a Billionaire. In 1999, he was awarded the Time Magazine Person of the Year Award.

Expansion of Amazon.com
On July 16^th, 1995, Bezos opened Amazon.com (at this point, only selling books) and, by September, the website took in sales of over $20,000 a week. The website gain popularity through the innovations of customer reviews, one click shopping, and email order verification. In 1997, the company went public and soon became a major competitor with the traditional booksellers, Borders and Barnes and Noble.

Bezos’ business strategy is based on the principle of “increasing the market share” as quickly as possible and stressing “The Six Core Values”.

• Customer obsession
• Ownership
• Bias for action
• Frugality
• High hiring bar and innovation

Amazon quickly transitioned from exclusively selling books to selling music, electronics, video, and more. In 2002, they formed a clothing department by creating partnerships with major retailers such as the Gap. By 2006, the company boasted sales of over 10.7 billion a year.

New Prospects

2011 Amazon Kindle DX

In 2007, Bezos introduced a handheld e-reading device called the Kindle. Unlike other portable devices, the Kindle is not back lit and uses “E Ink” technology as not to strain the customer’s eyes when reading text over an extended period of time. The device accommodates adjustable text size and wireless internet connectivity so the user can download and store titles. In the related YouTube clip, Bezos explains how the Kindle only plays a small part in his vision of a new reading experience. He institutes a structure in which Amazon will provide content that can be read across a myriad of platforms including cell phones, laptops, tablet computers, and the Kindle to cater to the consumer’s active life.

When introduced, the Kindle took hold of 95 percent of the market for E-books. Now, Kindle faces competition from the iPad and Nook platforms. Bezos responded by competitively cutting the price and adding features such as 3G mobile technology, faster processers, and longer battery life.

Recently, Amazon signed a deal with the Wylie Agengy which gave Amazon direct rights to certain work by their represented authors. This deal bypasses the role of publishers and allows books to be sold and a much lower price. While many argue that this deal undercuts royalty rights for authors, publishers, and copyright holders,
Bezos argues that E-books and E-readers have revitalized the literature industry and the increase in literature sales will compensate.

Amazon.com Controversies

Differential Pricing
In 2000, Amazon was accused of price discrimination when customers received different prices based on the presence of cookies that indicated how frequently they visited the site. Frequent customers received lower prices once they deleted cookies which showed Amazon’s perusal of new customers. Bezos apologized for
the controversy, reimbursed customers, and stated that Amazon would “never… test prices based on customer demographics”.

Sales Tax
Amazon has received criticism for having an advantage over local book and goods sellers by not collecting sales tax from customers who live in territories in which Amazon does not have a physical presence and consequently offering lower prices.

Kindle Remote Content Removal
In 2009, Amazon deleted certain titles violating US copyright law from costumer’s kindles without notification and permission from the customers. The E-books were originally sold by an Australian Publisher (a region in which the titles had fallen into public domain).  However, when the titles were electronically sold in America, the regional copyright did not extend, and had to be taken down. The customers eventually received a rebate but the event brings up the question of if companies can revoke digital material.

Also, Amazon has been known to remove ‘inappropriate’ texts from user’s Kindles. While this decision is usually justified, there have been instances where arguably appropriate texts have been taken away only to be reinstated.

 

Google

By: Brian Dole

Mission:

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”

History

• Google was created in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both were students at Stanford University
• In the beginning, it ran under the Stanford University website with the domain name google.stanford.edu
• The Google domain name was registered on September 15th, 1997
• The company was incorporated on September 4th, 1998
• It was originally based in Susan Wojcicki’s garage, a friend of the duo, in Menlo Park California

 

Sergey Brin and Larry Page

 

How It Works

Conventional search engines ranked their results by counting the number of times the searched words appeared on the page. Page and Brin discovered a different system of ranking searches by looking at the relationships between sites. They called it PageRank which worked by determining a website’s relevance on the number of pages and importance of those pages that linked back to the original site.

It is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weight to each separate part in a set of hyperlinked documents, it purpose being to measure or calculate the importance of that part within the set. So then, the calculated most important page would be displayed first in the search results and so on and so forth.

 

Advertising

Google makes nearly all its revenue from its advertising. They display certain advertisements to different people based on information obtained by the company DoubleClick. Using the company’s technology, Google is able to determine users’ interests and then target certain advertisements based on who is viewing them. This created a stir in the online community however because many feel that the company keeping track of what we view online is an invasion on privacy.

Google Analytics allows owners of websites to keep track of how many people use their website by looking at how many people click on a certain link on the site. Google AdWords allows advertisers to place the ads on any Google content site, and are compensated for it through either a cost per click or cost per view agreement. Another Google product in tandem with AdWords is Adsense. Adsense allows website owners to have advertisers ads on their site and therefore earn money every time the ad is clicked. Google is the door to the internet for most, so its not surprising how much money they make from advertising like this.

 

Criticisms of Google

Recently Google has gone under intense scrutiny for violating privacy conditions and laws. Google’s storage of cookies has led it users to question the actions. In 2007, the Google Watch site reported that cookies had a life span of 32 years and had a unique ID code that would allow for the creation of user data logs. People claim that Google is gathering loads of personal data without the knowledge of the user. Below is a video from Consumer Watchdog about Google’s anti-trust and privacy policies.

 

Here is another video about the ‘Dark Side of Google’:

 

 

 

 

 

Online Gambling

by Melanie Alban

 Intro:
Online gambling is a pretty “booming” industry these days.  Not only is it     popular in the United States, but also in countless other up and coming  countries all over the world. Certain gambling sites are so large in other countries that they are even included in their stock markets. Online gambling sites offer a wide range of gambling and betting that meets the many different interests of its users.

Even though the online gambling industry is rapidly growing in numerous countries each day, it is probably one of the most controversial industries.  There are laws within many of these countries that are directed towards online gambling alone.  The United States alone has many restrictions when it comes to online gambling.

What is online gambling?
Online gambling is basically just like regular gambling and betting, however, it is all done over the internet.  It is estimated that the online gambling industry makes anywhere from 20 to 50 billion dollars each year.  The number of online gambling sites continues to quickly increase as it becomes more popular in up and coming countries. The estimated number of sites that are available to users in the online gambling industry estimates to about 30 thousand.

What types of online gambling are there?
There are numerous different types of online gambling. According to this website, here is a list of the typical types of online gambling:

•     online sports betting
•     online casinos
•     online poker
•     online gaming

Of these different types, online sports betting is probably the most popular.

What are the laws for online gambling in the United States?
While it is perfectly legal to gamble online in other countries, there is a long and drawn out history when it comes to the laws on online gambling in the United States.  Wikipedia offers a simplified explanation of the different laws and regulations put on online gambling.  Wikipedia also gives specific examples of online gambling court cases.

Technically speaking, online gambling is illegal in the United States.  The actual gambling website is not allowed to operate within the United States, however, they can get away with hosting their site servers in other countries.  The reason that they have their servers in other countries is because the online gambling is not illegal in all countries.   It is then up to the users of the sites to understand the terms and conditions of the site, as well as knowing if online gambling is illegal in their location.

However, taking this into consideration, the United States Wire Wager Act states that not only can the user of the online gambling site be prosecuted, but also the foreign site itself for allowing the United States users to access their site while in the United States.

The whole legal background of online gambling is really complicated and confusing.  It all depends on the situation or circumstance of how someone or a company gets charged if they are caught.  Each court case concerning online gambling is different and unique due to the complexity and difference in laws and regulations of the different countries of the world.  Also, the internet makes it quite difficult as well since everything that is hosted on the internet is able to be accessed by anyone around the world, even it their specific action, such as online gambling, is illegal in their country.

 

HTML 5

by Erick Convery

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 5 is the fifth revision of the HTML standard language for constructing any sort of content for use on the World Wide Web.  A person who views a webpage does not see the HTML as it is written.  Instead the viewer sees the results that are interpreted by the HTML code.  HTML 5 makes a number of changes and improvements to the fourth revision of the HTML standard language, HTML 4.

History of HTML

The first instance of a form of hypertext language was proposed by Vannevar Bush in 1945.  This would eventually set the foundation for the invention of HTML.  This, however, did not come for quite some time.  In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web as a way to connect a number of computers over a single network.  This was originally done as part of an international scientific organization called CERN, based out of Geneva, Switzerland.  When he designed the Web, he used HTML as the publishing language.  Berners-Lee’s original version of HTML was extremely simple, but as the years went on more and more changes were made to eventually become the complex language it is today.  Many of these changes had to do with the tag attributes that are needed to construct a web page.  The standards of HTML today are set by an organization called the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C.

HTML Revisions

• HTML
• HTML +
• HTML 2
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4
• HTML 5

Example of HTML 5 Code

What’s New?

HTML 5 has a number of new concepts.  Many of these concepts deal with the general layout of a page such as <div>, <span>, <footer>, etc.  There is also a much larger focus on the use of audio and video throughout web pages using HTML 5.  However, a number of other changes stem from concepts that are now considered obsolete.  With the increased use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), there is no longer much use for tags dealing with font, style and size, as most of this is done through CSS.

Popularity

In a recent look at the top 100 sites with the most Internet traffic, 34% of those sites were running HTML 5.  Out of this 34%, the sites that used HTML 5 the most consisted of social media sites and search engines.  It is interesting that search engines are the major users of HTML 5 since the main editor of HTML 5 is Ian Hickson from Google.  Since HTML 5 is a relatively new concept, it is not surprising that 20% of sites are still running the older revision, HTML 4.01.  Many, such as Steve Jobs, believe that HTML 5 will continue to grow in popularity.  Steve Jobs even went as far as to say that HTML 5 is going to make such programs as Adobe Flash obsolete through its new form of programming for audio and video.

 

E-Books and E-Readers

Overview

An e-book is an electronic version of a printed book according to the Oxford Dictionary of English. They are often read via e-readers though they can be read on computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

History

• 1971- Michael S. Hart launches Project Gutenberg and creates the world’s first e-book by typing the Declaration of Independence into a computer
• 1998- Libraries provide free e-books to public
• 1998- First dedicated e-readers are released,  Rocket Ebook and SoftBook
• 2002- Publishes Random House and Harper Collins started to sell digital of their publications
• 2007- Amazon releases the Kindle and Kindle Store which had over 90,000 e-books
• 2010- Apple releases the iPad, a tablet device that is also an e-reader
• 2010- Google eBookstore opens with over 3 million titles
• 2010- Amazon reports its e-books sales outnumbered sales of hardcover books for the first time

This image (below) shows how much the e-book market has grown in just the past right years.

Competition

There is a ton of competition in the e-reader market. The main competitors are Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple. A Goldman Sachs report from this February stated that the Kindle (Amazon) has a 67% market share while the Nook (Barnes & Noble) has a 22% share. They also measured e-book sales, with Amzon selling 57% of ebook, Barnes and Noble 27%, Apple 9%, and others 6%.

Advancements

The e-reader has undergone quite a transformation from its inception. The list of products from left to right: Rocket Ebook, Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iPad, Border Kobo.

Advantages

Here are some common advantages that people mention frequently about e-books:

1. Cost– e-books are less expensive that printed books and many are free
2. Takes up less space- don’t need a bookshelf to store books
3. Flexibility– can translate, change font, text-to-speech software, notes, etc.
4. Better for Environment– don’t need to use paper and ink and other raw materials to make
5. Social Sharing– can easily share quotes via Twitter, Facebook

Disadvantages

While there are many advantages to e-books, they have their fair share of disadvantages as well.

1. Feel– many people love the feel of a paper book in their hand
2. Packaging– ebooks are often missing cover art, typefaces, and binding
3. Sharing– you can’t lend or share e-books with friends
4. Keeping– don’t know if you will be able to read e-books you purchase now in 10 years
5. Second-hand books– no way to buy cheap second-hand copies

Future

Many experts predict that e-readers, while successful now, will be replaced by tablets in the future. We are starting to see that happen now. Amazon, the leader in the e-Reader industry, recently announced the Kindle Fire, a tablet to compete with the iPad.

Companies are working to create tablets that double as authentic e-readers which would make purchasing e-readers obsolete.

“It could be that by 2020 you can still buy a super cheap e-reader for $20, but by and large, the volume of sales will be so close to zero as to be indistinguishable, like CD players are now,” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, a market research firm.

 

Moblogging and MMS

Moblogging and MMS

By: Caroline Valentino

What is Moblogging?

Mobile blogging (moblogging) is a technique of publishing to a website or blog from a mobile phone or other handheld device.The blogging craze has blown up since it debuted in cyberspace in the 1990s and now with the creation of smart phones, it is even easier to keep on with blog updates. Moblogging helps bloggers keep up with their routine blogging even when they are on the move. Bloggers are now able to write, record and upload different media all from a mobile device.

Mobile blogging is extremely popular with people who own camera phones, which allows them to email and MMS multimedia such as photos and video which then comes into view on different blogging websites. Even if the phone isn’t equipped with a camera, mobile blogging can be done from any Internet-capable phone. Many major blogging websites make it a goal to make it easy for moblogging. There are many apps created for blogging websites, such as Tumblr. As the technology with mobile phones continues to increase, so will the technology with moblogging.

 

The Creation of Moblogging

Steve Mann, of the University of Toronto invented a    wearable photographic device. The device was originally  created for human rights workers to take picture and  video evidence of dangerous situations while avoiding  being targeted for using regular cameras. Moblogging”  was first used in 1995 but Adam Greenfield didn’t coin  the term until 2002. Moblogging is very helpful for tourist  when access to a computer is limited.

 

 

 

What is MMS?

Mobile phone users are constantly updating their blogs to connection with friends and family. Another way to keep in touch, aside from blogs, is texting. With the invention of MMS, is it possible to send picture and videos to others.

Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from mobile phones. It surpasses the capability of the SMS (shot message service) and allows people to send a text message or more then 160 characters.

MMS was first created as a captive technology that would allow service providers to “collect a fee every time someone snaps a photo.” By 2008 the MMS usage level had passed 1.3 billion active users who generated 50 billion MMS messages and produced annual revenues of 26 billion dollars.

The most popular use of the MMS is to send pictures to family and friends,however other capabilities that can be embedded within MMS include:

• Text (formatted with fonts, colors, etc)
• Images (JPEG, GIF format)
• Audio (MP3, MIDI)
• Video (MPEG)
• Ringtones

Difference between MMS and SMS:

MMS is simply an extension of SMS, so it familiar to people already using SMS. MMS messages not a collection of many attachments, and instead it is made up of one entity. This stated previously, MMS messages have no size limit and could be many Kbytes in size. MMS requires third generation (3G) network to allow such large messages to be delivered. Despite all the extras that one enjoys with MMS, SMS still continue to be preferred mode of communication as it is simple and easy. MMS on the other hand is more for sharing fun and media.

 

eBay

By: Megan Stanton

eBay is America’s largest online auction sight where anyone with a computer and Internet access can buy or sell products to other consumers.  eBay was founded on September  3, 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Morad Omidyar.  The company headquarters are located in San Jose California, but the service is now available in thirty-nine countries.

According to the company’s website, “Pierre Omidyar founded eBay on a simple idea: People are basically good.  This fundamental belief created a completely new kind of marketplace, forever transforming e-commerce.  Today our values continue to guide how we do business and connect buyers and sellers around the world.”  eBay lists the following three criteria as what they believe in on their website:

• Creating opportunities for people
• Caring – because people depend on them
• Making a difference in the world

Omidyar created eBay as an “experiment” over labor day weekend in 1995.  He was attempting to create equal access to a single global marketplace, and he succeed.  The site now has an estimated 90 million users with $1,900 worth of goods sold every second.  Since its founding, the company has expanded to include other similar websites such as StubHub, a concert/sport/etc. ticket buying and selling site, and Half.com, a textbook buying and selling site.

The following image shows an abridged timeline of the history of the company:

eBay has managed to avoid major controversy in its lifespan, a majority of the controversial cases dealing with fraud.  A notable scandalous case took place in September of 1999 and is outlined in this article from the NY Times.  In this instance, a man attempted to auction off a “fully functional” human kidney for $25,000.  The auction for the kidney reached $5,750,100 before being taken down by the company later that day.  Shortly after, other transplantable human organs were posted on the site, presumably as jokes, and were immediately removed by eBay.

On their website, eBay clearly states their policies regarding prohibited items.  A full list of the items can be found here, but some of the prohibited items include:

• Most live animals
• Drugs
• Hazardous materials
• Human organs
• Firearms, weapons, and knives

eBay started out as a web programmer’s experiment but catapulted into a way of life.  The website has had a huge cultural impact, not only on American society, but in countries around the world.  eBay popularized the auction style of buying and selling by connecting people from across the country, and now the world.  It gave rise to competing sites, such as Craigslist, that work in similar ways.  The website created a new way to take advantage of the Internet.  Omidyar succeed in creating an online service that enabled consumers to also become sellers.  The website has revolutionized the way we as a society buy and sell goods.

 

Issues Faced by Bloggers

By: David Gerz

Bloggers Rights

Many students go to school to study journalism because they want to write for newspapers and magazines. However, given the way that society has been changing, many of these journalists may find themselves blogging instead of writing articles for print. On-the-other-hand, blogging is not restricted solely for the journalists and the educated—anyone can have a blog. This raises the issue of bloggers rights.

The main debate over blogging is whether bloggers should be protected under the rules and regulations that print journalists are. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an organization that is continually fighting for more rights for bloggers. On the their website the EFF contains a section called Legal Guide for Bloggers that discusses what certain rights bloggers have and what they should do if they find themselves in a predicament.

Overview of Basic Rights

• Legally liable for what you post
• Short quotes are protected under the Copyright Act
• You can get a Creative Commons license
• Subjective to libel
• Truth is typically a valid defense
• Section 230 Protection

So many people in the world have a blog, there are so common. The most important thing, in my opinion, that a blogger can do is to think carefully before hitting that post button. You never know who is going to see your post and you never know what effect it will have on someone. Whether someone is offensive to you or not, you have to be careful about the emotions and feelings of other people.

The video below talks about some of the issues around blogging, specifically in the music world:

 

The Ethics Behind Blogging

Now that some of the concerns of the rules and regulations of blogging have been discussed the next important theme to talk about is blogging ethics.

About.com says that there are three basic guidelines that bloggers should follow:

1. Cite Sources – there is nothing more aggravating and frustrating to a journlist, scholar, designer, etc. than seeing his or her work posted somewhere else without getting credit for being the original creator.
2. Ask Permission – depending on the content, simply quoting or citing just isn’t enough. In certain circumstances you have to ask the creator if you can use their information/design/etc. If you don’t ask for permission and use it without their knowledge and especially don’t cite the author, you most likely will be slapped with a lawsuit.
3. Play Nice – for the most part, all content on the Internet can be viewed by anyone with a computer and Internet connection. You never know who will view your post and have an adverse reaction. Just be mindful of what you post and be aware of the consequences that may arise.

More Guidlines

A website called Cyberjournalist posts more guidelines for how they believe bloggers should behave, ethically. Check out the website for more information, but the main theme between About.com and Cyberjournalist seems to be, write honestly and nicely.

Blogger Ethics in the News

This is a link to an article from The Washington Post in 2003 that talks about real life examples of blogging ethics.

Personally I think that bloggers have to be very careful. I think that it’s fair to say that most people read a blog at least once a week. Bloggers have a lot of influence and are being seen in the news more and more these days. Bloggers have to be careful so they don’t offend anyone. It’s a tricky issue to tackle because certain people are offended more easily than others; however, if you want to be a blogger you have to try to be aware of the reach you have and the people you may offend.

 

Web Design Basics

by Sheila Watko

One of the most important design principles I learned from the two readings is simplicity.  I think that a lot of the principles relate back to this one, like the use of whitespace to allow the page to breathe and not look so cluttered, the elimination of invisible question marks by making the brand of the site apparent right away, and the use of effective writing that gets to the point quickly instead of using fancy wording.  Web design seems to be mostly about the consumer, not the designer, and how to get the information they need to them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Something that was surprising to me was the description of right-hand columns and how uncommon they are in “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design.”  Jason Beaird made an interesting point that high cursor usually hovers around the right side of the screen anyway, so for him, a right-hand column is already where his cursor is hovering, ready to be clicked.  I have never thought about that, but my cursor is usually hovering around the right side of my screen as well.  I would guess that this is the case for many people, and it makes me wonder why more websites don’t make use of the right-hand column.  I suppose since we read from left to right, it seems to make more sense that our navigation is on the left side of the screen, but as Beaird also pointed out, if we have navigation on the right side, then our content will be the first thing on the left, and therefore the first thing the eye notices.

I like the design of the American Eagle Outfitters website.  It is attractive, clean and easy to navigate.  The colors complement each other and do not distract from the information, and the graphics highlight the mood of the company and the products they are selling.  The homepage is very simple to figure out, it has four headings across the tops.  When you click on one (“Womens” for example), it redirects to a new page featuring everything that heading has to offer, with the promotions on display as graphics and the rest of the subheading on the left (“Jeans,” “T’s + Polos” etc.).  The one issue I have with the design is that there are no apostrophes in “Mens” or “Womens,” which I think is a result of the chosen font, but it looks like the company does not know proper grammar or has made a typo.  The site is still well-designed, though.

I had always thought that Philly.com is very poorly designed for a major city’s main news outlet: if you Google The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly.com comes up and it is kind of a mess.  There are large ads that take up a good chunk of space on the right-hand side of the page as well as across the top, which are both annoying and unattractive.  The search function is awful.  Sometimes if I remember an article I have recently read and try to find it using keywords from the topic it was about, it is nearly impossible.  Usually, the first articles that come up are from months or even years ago.  There is a lot of text on all of the pages in little boxes, which I assume is because it is a news site and each box with text is part of an article, but it looks very cluttered.

 

Web Design Basics

by Melanie Alban

Overview:

After reading the two articles on web design, it was surprising how much thought and detail is put into designing a website. I knew it took a lot of thought and work, but I did not realize there were that many aspects that went into it.  There are many details that need to be thought over and planned out before a design for a website can actually be made.  A few of these details include color palette, audience, amount of text, what the website is about, how everything will be laid out, how many pages there will be and what information they will contain, etc. There are so many aspects that go into a web design that it is hard to actually list them all.

According to the article titled “10 Principles of Effective Web Design”, the 10 most effective fundamentals of web design are:

•     Don’t make users think
•     Don’t squander users’ patience
•     Manage to focus users’ attention
•     Strive for feature exposure
•     Make use of effective writing
•     Strive for simplicity
•     Don’t be afraid of the white space
•     Communicate effectively with a visible language
•     Conventions are our friends
•     Test early, test often

According to this article, if you follow these simple guidelines, your web design will be successful in presenting different information to its visitors.

I found it very interesting that web designers still use paper to plan out their ideas before actually going to a computer.  I know I had to do the same thing for my graphics class, I just never really thought that web designers would do the same thing.  It makes sense to everything on paper though.  It will save time in the long run to have an idea already down on paper before getting to the complicated coding of the design.

Well Designed Site:
I think that the Adobe website is a very well designed website.  There are a lot of elements that Jason Beaird talked about in his article titled “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” that are used in the design of this website. The navigation bar is clearly visible at the top making it easy for a visitor to locate.  The site layout is clearly divided into thirds.  There is an interesting graphic as well as some text that keeps the site simple, yet interesting.

Poorly Designed Site:
As someone else has already said, I think that the Loyola website is poorly designed.  The visual aspects are fine, however, looks are not everything, as stated in the articles.  Navigating around the site and finding different things you need is almost an impossible task.  There is stuff hidden everywhere and finding exactly what you need takes a long time which makes it frustrating to visit the site.