"Second life"

Playing games online, chatting with your friends, sharing ideas and thoughts has its good sites not only bad when used properly. This web-site http://www.wired.com/, tries to show us that having cyberfriends and spending hours in front of a computer can be actually beneficial. This website has an article about a very popular massive multi player online game, called Second Life. In this game players create an avatar that represents them, and they play and interact with other players in a virtual world. This game is very social in nature, and this can be helpful to many people. This online game is especially beneficial to people who are disabled, or have psychological trauma. People who are disabled are able to interact with other players around the world, without being judged, no one can tell who they are, and if they have any disabilities or not. There have even been virtual islands created for people with disabilities, allowing their avatar characters to "live" in one area of the virtual world. Another group of people that benefits greatly from this game are children who had abusive parents. This game allows them to regain their confidence and social skills. Meeting people online eliminates the stress usually involved in meeting new people. Second Life allows these kids to build their confidence, meet new people, and have fun all at the same time. Second Life is often utilized in colleges, to give students an example of working in real life. Professors can find out how successful a marketing student might be by putting him to the test in the virtual world. Second Life and other online games of this kind have many benefits for their users.

"Obama's campaign's use of social networking tools."

Who once knew that candidates for president would develop a new tool of social networking sites to help themselves in running for office. Barack Obama while running for president during a 2008 elections had a social networking website that have help him rise money and get his support that is known to be MyBO- http://www.my.barckobama.com/. After scoring Texas for Obama Trappi his campaign manager says: "In 1992, Carville said, 'It's the economy,stupid!' ... "This year, it was the network, stupid!" Using this sort of web site for political campaign was a great idea, people could see all the important events that went on like for examples Obama's speeches. They also used music, pictures and videos to connect candidate with ordinary people. " The campaign, consciously or unconsciously, became much more of a media operation than simply a presidential campaign."

"Frontier: Growing up online"

The 21 century is full of technology, sometimes it helps sometimes it leads to tragedies. With time passing by internet became a way of living for children and teenagers. www.PBS.org is a great web site that's dedicated mainly to children growing up in their cyber worlds and their parents that don't even know what're doing. It tries to open parents eyes to this new problem, of teenagers spending their life in front of the computer. Some parents don't even know what is going on online and how that could effect teenagers life. Internet is not only used for school related work or silly games anymore, now teenagers can have their cyber friends, with whom they share their secreats, exchange ideas and support themselves. I read this interview on "Frontier: growing up online" with John Halligan a father of a 13-years old boy that committed a suicide in which internet helped him. Some parents are more affraied of smaller issues like meeting up with some predators where in reality the picture is much bigger. Sometimes internet itself can do more harm to a teenager or a child than another human, exchanging suicide tips, supporting each other in eating disorder, this are much bigger issues that we should carefully watch for. Candace Kelsey wrote "Generation Myspace" in which she adresses the issue of using website like this and the time spend on them. "Many of my students are not just on MySpace at 8:00 at night. For many of them it's 4:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, for hours on end."Parents shouldn't be affraid of their children they should help them anyway they can by learning about internet and its usage. They should also have some control of how much their are using it and at what time.