Obama and McCain fight out key swing states

The issue I chose to write about is the competition between Barack Obama and John McCain over the key swing states that will decide who wins the White House on November 4th. I sorted through many different articles on the topic and found 1 article from each forum that I decided to use.
The first article I chose was published in the Washington Post and is titled AP polls: Obama ahead in 6 swing states, even in 2. The article is structured in a very convenient way. Each state is listed and then the article lists the poll used and the amount of electoral votes the state gets. After that the article lists the numbers from the poll. (i.e. Obama 52% McCain 46%.) Then the article lists the points of interest in the state. (i.e. which candidates are supported by which demographics and what issues are of the most importance in that particular state. Then there is a small details section that gives a few more bits of information about the state and it goes on to the next state. The article does this for the 8 swing states in the election, providing unbiased and detailed information. I found this article to be extremely informative and interesting. It is very structured and to the point. The article does not waste time with opinions or silly statistics. It is all very business like and brief. They are very careful to provide sources for all of their statistics and they don't make any claims unless they are proven to be supported by fact.

The next article I chose to write about was published on Yahoo by Yahoo news. It is titled "Obama widens lead over McCain in nation, key states." This article is also very informative but it differs from the Washington post article in many ways. The first major difference is the structure of this article compared to the other one. It isn't sorted out nearly as clear as the newspaper article. Where the newspaper article is put together very specifically the online article is written more freelance. The online article lists more than just current issues and statistics. It talks about past elections and what the candidates can do to change the trends that have occurred in past elections. It is very clear that the newspaper article exists only to give fact and to provide the reader with unbiased facts and statistics. The online article is much more free to write a more biased piece and to provide the reader with more then just proven facts and non-partisan facts.
Although the structure of these articles are different the content is somewhat similar. Both articles are focused on getting the most information out of the polls and finding out which candidate has a better chance to win the White House. They both rely on facts to give the public their best idea of who is going to win the election. The articles do rely on different polls so both of them offer different statistics. I found both articles to be extremely informative and although they had some differences both of them were similar in that they were both trying to discover and portray the same thing.

1)http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20081025/pl_bloomberg/acc_gj9gwbk8
2)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR2008102900894.html

Political Blog

The blog I chose to write about is called Politics Now and it is a blog written by contributors of the Buffalo News namely Jerry Zremski, Douglas Turner, and Robert J. McCarthy. The blog can be accessed by visiting http://buffalonews.typepad.com/politics_now/2008/08/index.html. The three contributors to this blog are writers for the Buffalo News who, in addition to writing for the paper, blog daily on the site. The blog began on august 22nd 2007 and is still posted on daily.
I found this blog to be very interesting. I especially liked how it has different contributors which allows readers to enjoy different opinions, viewpoints, and writing styles. The posts are mostly non partisan in nature. I started reading with the anticipation of reading a mostly liberal blog, but for the most part I couldn't tell if the writers were pro McCain or Obama. Many of the posts were directly about the competition between the 2 candidates but there will also posts that adressed other political issues.i like the post about whether Hillary Clinton would run for president again and the post about Kathy Konst and whether she voted twice in the 1998 election. It is important that people realize that the presidential election isn't the only political thing happening in the world right now. A lot of people have trouble putting the presidential election and all it's aspects into perspective. The bottom of the page did have an Ad for Obama which confirmed my initial suspicion that the blog leaned to the left.
I read the comments for most of the posts and it was very clear that many people use this blog as a forum for finding out about the election and also sharing their views on the hot issues and their likes and dislikes of the two candidates. For the most part it seems that most of the readers support Obama but many people question his links to the liberal organization ACORN. Many people got into heated debates with their comments. Many of the posts had comments by the same people multiple times.
Overall I really enjoyed reading the blog. Because the blog is done by professional political journalists I found the blog to be very informative and I learned a lot about the election that I didn't previously know. There is a good chance that I access this blog again before the election because it provides me with a simple, unbiased way to learn about what is going on.

1)Mathew. Can Blogs Effect Politics and Society?. April 27, 2006. URL: http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2006/04/27/can-blogs-affect-politics-and-society/
2)Pew Internet. (2008). The internet and the 2008 election. Retrieved on October 23, 2008 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_2008_election.pdf

Google Maps

Type www.maps.google.com into your web browser and you'll find yourself at one of the most innovative and helpful interactive sites on the entire internet, Google Maps. The internet has a countless number of map sites so what makes google maps so special? The answer is that Google maps has more special features then any other map website you'll find. Most map sites will get you directions to anywhere from anywhere in the entire world, but giving directions hardly scratches the surface of the functionality of google maps. In addition to giving you directions to anywhere in the world, google maps offers you the ability to get traffic and street views in over 50 US cities, and photos of hundreds of cities in the Northern hemisphere. The streetview feature actually allows you to get a 360 degree angle of any intersection in any city that is featured on the site. Whereas most sites can only give directions google maps can give you up to date traffic updates and show you a photo of exactly where you're going. Features that no other interactive map site can boast. Google Maps also has other incredible features that you can't find anywhere else. One of them allows you to search the life maps of Barack Obama and John McCain. I found this feature to be amazingly interesting because it lets you see everywhere the two candidates have journeyed to in their lives.
Another thing I like about the site is the layout. Some interactive sites are complicated and difficult to use but google maps has a very simple layout and all the features are extremely easy to use. All these features coupled with Google's reputation for innovation make google maps an incredible interactive website which is not only years ahead of the competitors but is also much easier to use.

Keeping in touch

Wikipedia defines an online community as a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, online social networks or instant messages rather than face-to-face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. After reading this definition I realized that I am an active participant of an online community that I share with all my friends from back home.
After our freshman year of college one of my friends decided to set up an email listserv for my entire group of friends, this way if one of us had something to say to everyone we could just send an email rather than having to tell everyone individually. This utilization of the internet has been very helpful and convenient over the past 3 years. At least once a week I receive an email from one of my friends with funny stories, websites I should check out or even just updates about how their lives are going. Keeping in touch with all my friends can be very difficult, but our listserv makes it extremely easy for all my friends to stay in touch and to know what's happening in eachothers lives. No matter how busy I may be I always have time to write a quick email, whereas if I had to talk to each of my friends individually it would be much more difficult to stay in touch.
The listserv I share with my friends is a great thing becuase it helps us maintain our relationships no matter where in the world we might be. I have friends that go to college all over the country and many who have studied abroad in the past. Without the internet and our listserv it would be very easy for them to lose touch, but with our listserv I can go a month without talking to a friend personally and still feel like we talk all the time. Our listserv also helps us maintain our friendships and cohesiveness. When we all return home for the holidays it feels as if we have been together the whole time because we have been communicating as a group and not just individually. We can get together and talk about things that happened to us at school as if everyone had actually been there to witness them. This makes us all feel closer to one another and helps us maintain the same type of status that we did in high school when we all used to hang out together every day. This way there is no catching up to do when we see eachother. Without our listserve it would take so much time to catch up with one another that by the time we were all caught up the vacation would probably be over already.
I am very grateful for the online community that I am a part of. It gives me the convenience and flexibility to share what I want with a large amount of people without sacraficing valuable time that I could be committing to schoolwork. When college is over and everyone is back home we will likely disband the listserv, but once everyone moves away again it will be an extremely valuable tool so that as the years go by we all stay in touch and maintain the closeness that we already have for so many years.

Wellman, Barry and Gulia, Melina. Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. August 1997. http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/netsurfers/netsurfers.pdf.

Various. (6 October, 2008). Virtual Community. Retrieved 13 October, 2008, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities

Multiple personalities- How do we differ from our online identities?

The DSM IV defines multiple personality disorder as having at least one alter personality that controls behavior. But in the new internet era don't we all have a second identity that functions at least somewhat separately from our normal self. In most cases everyone in America has a second identity that they use on the internet. Whether it be an identity for an anonymous internet chatroom, a screenname, or a team name for a fantasy league, the internet provides us with a platform to create a second identity for ourselves. When we converse with someone in an internet chatroom we are talking to an alias, very seldomly do people use their real names when identifying themselves. These aliases allow us to spend hours talking to people without every actually knowing who we are talking to. Like most people my age I have numerous internet identities. I have a screename, an email address, and numerous fantasy teams. The identity I choose to focus on is the many identities I have created throughout my numerous fantasy leagues. Over the years I've partaken in upwards of 20 fantasy leagues. I do everything from fantasy baseball to fantasy basketball and football. Each time I enter a league I am forced to create a team name. This team name will serve as my alias for the duration of the fantasy season. When people address me with wall posts or trade offers they are sending their information not to Seth Sininsky but to the alias I have chosen to represent me. When I join a public league I am randomly assigned to a league full of people who I do not know. So at its core this is just a league full of strangers who spend an entire season interacting with eachother without ever even knowing the real names of the fellow league members. Since I have used a different team name for every league i've been in i'd say that over the course of my life i've had upwards of 20 identities on the internet. No other medium allows users the ability to create and operate so many indentities throughout such a wide range of activities. Some people have multiple screenames and some people have up to 5 email adresses just to sort out all of their various identities in the real world. For instance a professional can create an email address for work, 1 for family, 1 for friends and maybe one for everything else. This is an example of an individual creating an online identity to help separate his real life identities. Like any other internet identity my fantasy league identities leave me vulnerable to identity theft. In order to sign up for a fantasy website a user must provide the site with all types of personal information. Since I do my leagues through yahoo I have had an active account with them for the better part of a decade. If anyone ever hacked into the yahoo database they would have access to information that could ruin my life. This is why it is extremely important for yahoo to have the most updated and stringent security software. In conclusion the internet gives us the opportunity to be whoever we want to be. If someone wants to get in a chatroom and claim to be the queen of England all they have to do is log in and type away. The anonymity of the internet has created a new cyber world which affords us the opportunity to play pretend with the rest of the world n be whoever we want to be.