STARTUP.COM DOCUMENTARY

In class, we watched a documentary about a company from it's startup to it's inevitable downfall. The company was called Govworks.com and was the very first website where you could pay your parking tickets online! Heck, I just did this the other day (not on govworks) It's founders consisted of three members who had known each other since high school. They were Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Chieh Cheung. Kaleil was the CEO and the other two were "Co-Ceos". Eventually Chieh Cheung got out before the company grew too big leaving with a profit. Later Kaleil and Tom had a dispute over how the company should be run which led to the eventual termination of Tom at Govworks. Because of the Dot com dot bomb in 2000 the company downsized and the two friends Kaleil and Tom went on to start a new startup.

This documentary was actually really fun for me to watch. I wasn't expecting something so dramatic and personal to be so entertaining like a movie and the fact that this is the real depiction of an event that actually happened was very cool to see. I was thoroughly invested in the documentary the whole time. Not only did I want to know about the status of the company and how everything would turn out financially, it was also just very interesting to see the personal aspect of everything. From Kaleil and his neglectful attitude towards his girlfriend(s) to him and Tom's relationship throughout the maturing of the characters as well as the company. This documentary really opened my eyes into seeing how a company can be run and how many hardships can lay awaiting for those who wish to start their own. But it also showed me the resilience and mistakes that were made so I can say that I learned a fair share through the documentary and am glad that I watched it.

Guest Speaker!

We had a guest speaker in class on tuesday! His name is Erik Hanberg and he is an entrepreneur as well as a writer! It was really interesting to listen to someone's history with business and writing. He talked about the very start of his ventures to what he is doing in the present as well as the status of some of his businesses. As someone who entertains the thought of one day creating my own business, it was nice to listen to someone who's actually been down that path. We got to ask questions and taking this opportunity, I asked what it takes to build a following because to me I think that's the hardest part. Both Andrew and Erik said to just do what you do and people will come for example, if you want to make videos then put up videos, make businesses if you want to become an entrepreneur. Which makes a lot of sense to me, if you don't have anything up then you won't receive any exposure and people can't find you! He wrote a couple mystery books, as well as a sci-fi trilogy which is really cool. I thought it was nice to see that anyone can write books or be the CEO of a company if you simply try.

Disintermediation and Singularity

In class we discussed a couple of terms and among some of those terms were disintermediation and singularity. These ideas are pretty interesting to me especially singularity so I want to talk a little bit about both as well as bring up some articles relating to them.

So defining both of these words I'll be using Merriam-Webster for their definitions.

Starting with 

Disintermediation :  the elimination of an intermediary in a transaction between two parties

which basically means instead of using a middleman, one party negotiates directly with the other for transaction purposes. I researched a bit about the topic and stumbled upon an article:

Disintermediation and Reintermediation by E-businessBy David Steele

In this article, Steele explains one clear advantage of disintermediation and that is to gather customer information. If the manufactures are in clear, direct contact with their demographic, then they will better be able to create a more catered product to their audience. Dell is one such example that is already taking customized orders. Another reason is to try and cut prices down from the mediator using this tactic. However, in later studies, it has been found that disintermediation's advantages did not prove to be better than using a mediator.

3 Reasons to Believe Singularity is Near
by Greg Satell

For this word merriam-webster actually didn't give the definition I was looking for because it was referring to other uses of the word. However, I guess I wasn't being specific enough because the word
I was looking for was technological singularity. In which case I'll give my own definition.

Technological Singularity: A hypothetical situation where artificial intelligence grows more intelligent than humans.

The article I linked is a pretty interesting one where Satell talks about 3 reasons why he thinks singularity will inevitably be occurring in the near future. Paraphrasing the article I'll just list them out here.

1. Technology is expanding at a RAPID rate.
2. Robots are taking human jobs.
3. We're editing genes.

I personally think that he's probably right. I don't know if it's anywhere in the near future but I believe that yes, there will a point in time where artificial intelligence could be more intelligent than humans.
Heck, google voice is already giving people answers to nearly any question you ask it which is something that I would never be able to do. However, I don't think that robots or intelligence will "take over" or become "greater" than humans because I don't believe that we can create sentience (apart from genetic manipulation ala dolly) at least... I hope not. Seeing as we are already editing genes and able to create clones, it may not be impossible to imagine creating a human clone where we edit it's dna to contain information connected to the worlds largest information database... scary thought but from watching too many horror movies that surround this topic, I don't think humans will actually delve into it.

2 things I would never buy online.

Ecommerce has been a huge success for business owners and buyers alike. Online stores such as amazon and ebay are now absolutely huge and worldwide. Amazon being the leading online mega market currently. I myself use amazon exclusively for online shopping and have even just recently made purchases using amazon prime now which I used to buy groceries online! They delivered my groceries the same day that I ordered them. It's really become a giant influence on selling merchandise and businesses in general.

Anyways, onto the topic. Two things that I would never buy online! One thing that I definitely wouldn't buy online is a pet! This one is pretty self explanatory but I'll list out a couple reasons anyway. A pet is a living creature (well, I guess plants would also fall under this category but plants are much less evident). First of all, I don't want a living thing being shipped to me because I don't know the process in which it would be delivered and I don't want it to be harmed or worse. And because I think the process in which you go to a pet store or adoption center where you try to find the "right" pet for you is somewhat of a personal experience and probably gives you a little more investment in the animal.

The second thing that I would never buy online are prescription drugs. Not even if this one is legal but I definitely think this one is something that no one should be buying online unless there is an extremely reputable company. The reason for this is because it's straight up dangerous! People are sometimes evil and want to harm others for whatever reason. One method of doing so would be altering the drugs or shipping a completely different drug than the one you ordered. There is a reason we have to go to a pharmacist to a licensed physician to receive prescription medication.

Scavenger Hunt!

In class on monday, we did an online scavenger hunt which consisted of looking for a bunch of randomly assorted information that is on the web. A lot of it relating to the teacher, Andrew! I was in a group of three since the teams didnt divide evenly. To be honest, my team mates had a little trouble finding a lot of the info so I actually answered over 80% of the questions. I had a lot of trouble at the end trying to find the married name of Andrew's middle sister. I thought of looking at his facebook info, his linkedin, and even family tree directories but I was unable to find anything. However, my partner called my attention and showed me a picture of the teacher with two other women. Lo and behold, they were his sisters. The hard part was discerning which one of them was the middle sister. So at this point we simply just had to make a guess and in the end we got it wrong. This experience was pretty fun and was a good test of finding any random information on the internet, it really proves that we can find almost anything on the web. But on the negative side of things, it also means that finding information about anybody is a lot easier than it looks. and we should be careful with the info that we put out there because once its up, it's almost a given that it's up there forever.

HTML website

For the second week of class, Andrew had us build our very own websites using HTML. Fortunately for me, I have made many websites before and had the experience and knowledge to just quickly whip up a small fun little website about sloths! After class, I actually have a huge huge 5 hour break so I just quickly went over to the library and did the assignment on one of the computers which had notepad++ on it. I've never used notepad++ before, I usually use atom or sublime text editor but using notepad++ was very simplistic and minimal which was appreciated. I did a website on sloth facts because I could use all different elements in the website! I could use headers, paragraphs, captions, images, and even lists and links. This assignment wasn't very hard but it was fun dabbling in html a bit since I don't really focus on html a lot.

Since I can't host the site anywhere, I'm just going to post the code here!

<html>

<head>
<title>Sloth Facts</title>
</head>
<body><center>
<h1>Welcome to my virtual life sample website.</h1>
<h2>This website is dedicated to the Sloth and all of the greatness and glory that they serve.</h2>
<img src="http://www.animalfactguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sloth4_full.jpg"></img>
<h5>A brown three-toed sloth smiling for the camera!</h5>
</center>
<ul>
<li>Sloths are a medium-sized mammal. There are two types of sloth the two-toed sloth and the three-toed sloth, they are classified into six different species.</li>
<li>A sloth's body is usually 50 to 60 cm long. Skeletons of now extinct species of sloth suggest some varieties used to be as large as elephants.</li>
<li>It used to be thought sloths slept for 15 to 20 hours a day. However, its now believed they only sleep around 10 hours a day.</li>
<li>Sloths usually only leave the tree they live in to go to the toilet once a week on the ground. This is when they are most vulnerable to being attacked by their main predators such as jaguars, the harpy eagle and snakes.</li>
<li>The sloth has very long, sharp, and strong claws that they use to hold on to tree branches. The claws are also their only natural defense against predators.</li>
</ul>
<center>
<h2>For more facts about Sloths, visit <a href="http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/animals/sloth.html">Sciencekids.co.nz</a></h2>
</body>
</html>

Similarities of e-mail and real mail service

Email is basically a different form of the same means of delivering a message to someone else. The methods are in fact nearly identical.

The process for real life mail is as follows:

The mail is put into the mailbox where the local mailman picks it up and brings it to the local post office. This is where it is sorted and eventually sent off to the general area of the recipient marked by the address. Here, it is once again sorted and eventually delivered to the address destination.

In the same way the process for emails is as follows:

The Email is written in your personal inbox (mailbox) and when it is sent, it is sent to various servers (sorting) and eventually reaches it's destination marked by the email address (physical address).

So in conclusion, just like how mail delivery doesn't just deliver straight from the origin to the destination, an email works the same way.