I recently upgraded to a smart phone, the Motorla Droid from Verizon Wireless. Last week, Verizon Wireless released an over the air update to the Android 2.1 operating systems, and some really cool new features were added to my phone. However, along with these was a piece of software that kind of baffles me.  It is called Google Goggles, and the premise behind it is that you point your phone’s camera at something, such as a bar code, label, or famous landmark, and the software will analyze the photo and then give you resources to learn more about whatever it was that you took a picture of. I played around with it a little bit, and it was able to recognize a few different labels and brands, and I guess it was kind of fun for like five minutes. But when I really think about it, I can’t find reason why you would ever really need to use this. The software only really works on well known objects anyway, so if you have a smartphone it would be a lot more time efficient and easier to just look search for it on Google than to take a picture of it and wait for Google Goggles to analyze the photo. Maybe as Google refines and advances the software it might prove usable, but for now it is just a fun thing to play around with whenever you are bored.

Creative Commons is a non profit organization whose purpose is to increase the amount of creative works that are available to the general public for “free and legal sharing.” The company’s goal is to expand the amount of these works so that members of the public can build and expand upon them. Creative Commons does this by using the copyright model that it invented, “some rights reserved” instead of the standard “all rights reserved” copyright model that has been in place for many years. A copyright license obtained through Creative Commons allows the originator of the work to designate which the specifics of how and when someone can use their creative work.

The people behind Creative Commons believe that the “some rights reserved” copyright model is preferable because the standard copyright model is too strict and doesn’t allow people to share and build upon others works.

However, there are many critics of this model who feel that it is unneeded and that it will hurt the copyrights in the long run. Some people believe that the standard copyright format already allows for the “some rights reserved” format and that Creative Commons ignores the basis behind creative works and makes it too easy for anyone to just take someone else’s work and tweak it how they see fit, without really ever doing anything original themselves. These critics also believe that this model does not provide for things like financial compensation for artists. Further, there are many critics who believe that Creative Commons seeks to bypass the law process by just writing down new rules, and that it is slowly eroding the creative copyright process by not giving any guidelines as to what a creative work is.

Personally I feel that Creative Commons is a good thing, and will not really hurt anything in the end, but each person can decide for themselves what they think about the Creative Commons copyright format.

Digg, Inc. prides itself on being a website where people can share content they have found on the web with other users, and then have other users vote on the content which they find the most entertaining, useful, helpful, etc. This content can be anything that is of interest to Digg’s users, be it news, videos, or photos.

In today’s on-demand world where everyone uses smartphones and has 24/7 access to everything on the web, Digg is a very useful website. Even better, the creators of Digg Inc. have expanded the reach of its website and made it even more applicable to today’s lifestyle  by creating mobile applications for smartphones such as the Iphone and Android operating system. This allows people to access all of this user created anytime they want.

I personally have a Motorola Droid and have downloaded the Digg App. for my phone so I could test it out. I have found it to be very user friendly, with a great interface that has the Digg stories categorized by Top (the highest rated content), Recent (the most recently added content), and Upcoming (content that is beginning to generate a lot of buzz on the website). The App also runs very fast and is clean and organized.

Overall, I think Digg is a great website, and I believe that the mobile Apps will continue to propel Digg’s popularity as people are able to have access to this content whenever and wherever they want.

For awhile, Kiva existed as a internet company which allowed people from all over the world to lend entrepreneurs in third wold countries money to startup their businesses. The loans ranged anywhere from $500 to over $1000 dollars, with the money being provided by many different people, usually at around $25 a person.

Recently Kiva owner Matt Flannery has decided to extend the loan service to those living in America also. This is in response to criticism by many people who ask why Kiva is helping all these underprivileged entrepreneurs in other countries yet ignoring the people who are trying to do the exact same thing here in America.

However, there are also some people who threw heavy criticism at Kiva for doing this albeit for another reason. They believe that the company should only be helping people in other countries, and that trying to help people in America as well spreads the money too thin.

Time will tell whether this move will be good or bad for Kiva.

My last post was about the new service that YouTube has just added, VEVO, which fixes the various problems of music and video quality, and copyright infringement. Well, honestly, none of that stuff even matters due to the fact that there is a website that allows for much easier music listening than anything YouTube could do. This website is called GrooveShark.

GrooveShark combines the best elements of two different websites, Pandora and Playlist.com, with a very easy to use and attractive interface. You can search for songs by title, artist, or album, and then drag and drop the songs into a playlist. You can then move the songs around and delete or add new titles. In addition, almost every song streamed in very high quality, and there is also a feature called GrooveShark radio which recommends new songs based on your tastes, similar to Pandora.

I have almost stopped using YouTube entirely for listening to music in favor of this much better website. I would encourage everyone to give this website a try and you will probably find that it is much easier to use than any other site you have previously used to listen to music.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/