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Hi Everyone,

By now you are probably familiar with the ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend meme’ you see in posts on 9GAG. At first, I just laughed at these pictures, but later on I googled her and found out that she is just a ordinary girl that has a normal life. Now she is going to use her viral reputation as the overly attached girlfriend with wide eyes and stalker of Justin Bieber for good causes in the world.

Laina Morris (her real name) is now starting to launch a series of Youtube video’s called “Dare to Share”. Laina has starting this because she believes that ‘the internet is a strong force that brings the whole world together. Nowadays we are more connected than ever through all possible channels. Together we can work to make it the most powerful method in helping others.’

Each month a new video with a new charity will be uploaded online. In these ‘Dare to Share’ video’s viewers can dare Laina to do crazy things and she will do this as money is raised for the charity each month. The first month (october) charity is Surf Camp; Laina tries to raise $50,000 for this Surf Camp, and in return she will do the following crazy things:

1. $1,000: I’ll drink a blend of five edible food without knowing what the content is.

2. $5,000: dance Gangnam Style in the Apple Store as a flash mob and have everyone join along.

3. $10,000: Eat as much food as possible and then ride the biggest rollercoaster I can find (And i’m deadly afraid of rollercoasters).

4. $50,000 Skydiving

I think it’s awesome that Laina Morris is using her funny viral reputation for good purposes. In the viral world, she seems to have a great voice and people (her followers) really like her. What do you guys think? Should you donate some money and believe that her Dare to Share video’s will actually work?

For the interested ones among us, here is the first video of the series ‘Dare to Share’

Joyce

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Hi Everyone,

A few days ago, Amanda Todd, a 15 year old teenager that was cyber-bullied, committed suicide. The whole story is really sad and moved me a lot, so thats why I’m posting this on the blog. Maybe some of you heard this already on the news; for the rest, google it and you can see that there is already a Wikipedia page of her.

Amanda Todd has been cyber bullied through the social media channel Facebook almost her entire life. It al began with video chatting on the internet and during these sessions she met new people. In one of these chats she flashed and she thought that was unharmless. Unfortunately from that day on, her life became as she said ‘hell’.

I cannot summarize (in words) her story of her life; I rather suggest you guys watch her youtube video. Amanda had posted this video “My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm.” a month ago and it was a sort of cry for help.

Reading about this made me realize that Social Media is really dangerous for (young) people. I didn’t realize that some people are having a really bad life because of this cyber-bullying. This thought and also the idea of stopping cyber-bullying is really hard, makes me feel sad.

What do you think?

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Hi everyone,

Last weeks topic is about Peer Production and Open Source. First, I’ll give a definition of these terms, then a brief summary of the assigned articles and afther this continue with my two chosen examples; Linux and BSD.

Open Source Software development projects are Internet-based communities of software who voluntarily collaborate to develop software that is available for everyone as a public good (Von Hippel & Von Krogh, 2003). Peer production is a social production model in which a group of individuals cooperate together to contribute information and knowledge. (Benkler & Nissebaum, 2006).

The first article of Dr. Zhang and Dr. Zhu examines the causal relationship between group size and incentives to contribute. The Chinese Wikipedia has been used for this research, because their field data is very valuable regarding the Great Firewall System and provides them with natural experiments regarding the several blocks since the launch in 2002. The results were remarkable: instead of a negative relationship, there was a positive relationship between group size and the contribution levels. The researches attribute the cause to social benefits. Summarizing this, social effects dominate free-riding incentives and play a significant role in motivating contributors (Zhang & Zhu, 2011).

The second article by dr. von Hippel and dr. von Krogh informs us about Open Software Source (OSS). OSS is the middle ground between the private investment and collective action model, and is called the “Private-Collective Innovation Model”. It appeared to offer the best of both worlds. First of all, it eliminates the belief that free revealing of innovations developed with private resources will cause a loss of private profit for the innovator due lack of protection. Secondary, it eliminates the belief the benefits of the contributor and free rider are equal. (Von Hippel & Von Krogh, 2003).

The third article begins with an explanation of Open Source Software. OSS is described as the continued survival of the collective invention model. In this article the term “collective model” is used instead of “the private-collective model of innovation”.   The Open Source differs from the other cases that are discussed, regarding the success in solving the social dilemma. (Osterloh & Rota, 2007).

The last article is an interview with the MySQL chief Marten Mickos, Marten Mickos’ reaction about why programmers contribute to the open source software somewhat differs from the previous readings. He believes that the contributors are as selfish as anybody else and that they are trying to improve their own product or career. (Hyatt, 2008).

The two examples that i chose were the open source operating systems Linux and BSD. The general advantages are that is is free of charge and use, has less viruses and you can make adjustments. The general disadvantages are that there is knowledge required and fewer application due the smaller market share. Furthermore, Linux has a huge varierty of distros choices and bugs are quickly fixed. BSD is easy to install the base system and has jails.