Social Bookmarking

During my experience with Social Bookmarking tools, I learned that such tools help alot with organizing yourself and keeping everything saved somewhere where it will not be hard to find. It makes everything very simple, which is a very good thing when you consider the time you want to spend looking for something. With such helpful tools, one is able to keep track of all the information that is being gathered and is also able to organize everything in a very little amount of time. These tools are not time consuming and help the user alot. Diigo is one of the best tools a student could ever ask for. It helps a student alot because say for example the student is asked to do a research paper and needs the works cited, if he or she forgets to cite something and wants to go back to see where it was that they got the information from, all the student does is type the sentence and Diigo will automatically find the exact website that it is from. Unlike Google or Yahoo, Diigo takes you straight to the website and highlights the sentenced you have typed. Google and Yahoo give you millions of sites which include the same words, or many times just a few of those words and not in order. It is much harder and time consuming to use those sites to look for something. Diigo facilitates the work of people and it also saves you alot of time, which is a great advantage to students considering the fact that they sometimes have more than one assignment to complete.

Comparing a Wiki to a Blog..

Although wikis and blogs are very similar, they differentiate in many ways. A wiki is very distinct from blogs in the way that in a wiki, one can edit and save changes. There is many users who can change the input of the wiki and save what they think should be on it. Users have the right to change it everytime they feel it is necessary. When using blogs, there is only one person who can change what is written. The user can see the comments of all the different people who read the blog and post what they think about it. He or she can receive the information that they leave when they criticize the blog and take it in a good way and add what they recommended him or just simply ignore it. Wikis are most common among groups of friends because they can all input and work together to accomplish great work. With blogs there are alot of times where a random person posts his "news" and people, sometimes complete strangers put what they think of it.

RSS

Nowadays, a very simple method which is facilitating the lives of many users is Really Simple Syndication, also known as RSS. This system is very useful to users because it helps them combine ideas and collaborate on a specific subject. Each person has the right to look into the input and if he feels the need for a change all they have to do is simply click on the edit button and changed what is need to. After the person feels that what he/she has edited is correct, all they need to do is save the changes and wait for the opinions of others. This method is really helpful and with this process the ideas of different people can be expressed in a short period of time. With the help of RSS feeds, people can manage to get things done very fast as well as effectively considering the fact that hundreds of people can look at what you have inscribed to your blog and upgrade it. This has many advantages because if you are running short in time and need help with something and there is not much help around you, then you can simply post what you have and get better ways of writing it and also get more ideas. These feeds are very useful for planning trips, meetings, and even vacations because they help you know what is expected and what you will need to take with you so you wont forget anything. With the help of other users you will know what is expected to happen and probably even more, which is always very good. The number of users is increasing everyday because of how helpful and accessible they are.

Assignment 1

In the last couple of years, the use of blogs has increased dramatically. Blogs help spread news quickly and effectively, they also help people share their ideas. When someone posts something, people are allowed to comment what is stated and post their own opinion. This method helps in the intelligence setting because it helps analysts communicate faster and share their ideas amongst themselves very easily. With very little effort and in a short period of time, analysts from intelligence agencies will have collaborated and received many ideas and shared their points of view towards the situation. Blogs are very useful to intelligence agencies because they could gather up plenty of information from analysts all over the world very quickly. Without blogs, people from these agencies would have to travel to meet with others just to share ideas and their perspectives towards the situation. They would have to schedule a place, a date, and the number of people attending the meeting. Thanks to blogging the intelligence agencies will be able to prosper and obtain much more information than before. Many employees from these agencies are going to be able to put together what they know and get much more done. It will become easier for them to share what they know, which will lead to a safer America. Analysts from the intelligence agencies will not only be able to share what they know and what think with employees from their own agency, but with analysts and employees from all over the United States as well. There are many advantages when you consider having blogs used in the intelligence setting. If they keep this up, we will soon have a better and safer country with fewer worries of terrorist attacks.
Although it sounds like a simple task, one would have to take into consideration the dangers of having a terrorist or any enemy of the United States hack into the computer systems of the intelligence agencies. Enemies of the U.S. could also hold agents hostage and acquire various information by simply asking them to give them access to the computer system or give them some sort of punishment. Even though there would be plenty of advantages when having blogs being used in the intelligence field, one cannot overlook the many disadvantages which would have to be faced by the analysts. If very important information would happen to land in the “wrong hands”, the country would face many troubles and have to face the consequences because of a simple mistake. Analysts would have to find a way of keeping everything secret, maybe even have a secret way of communicating through the blogs so that this operation could be successful. Blogs could lead to a better tomorrow and have many positive impacts on the country but the question is, “Will the country actually take a risk?”