safestreet

    safe street was a really good project and it was the best presented as well. the idea to make driving safer and to crack down on the drunk drivings, is beautiful and extremely helpful. drunk drivers are incredibly in-safe indivuals, either to themselves or others, also the accidents or death that come along with it is so high in rates that its just heart breaking. so of course I will think that an app to keep drunk drivers from not only hurting themselves but also the ones around them is a fantastic idea and quite possibly should become a real app. the only problem I found was that you cant make people download an app, and a person who drinks a lot probulay wont want the app at all, so it may not actually be a real working and efficient way, but hey I still think the concept is creative and if was more practical well then it would definetly be the most life saving thing ever.

mentality reality

   this project by far was the best one that I heard. the idea to give those with mental illnesses or problems a better place to deal with their emotions is fantastic. I thought they put a lot of good wrok into their project as well. making the videos themselves, even just the website was really good to, it was definetly well put together. of course like every other project, money comes in to play, but im sure if this was an actual plan, there would be no reason that they couldn't come up with the funds needed to represent this idea. all in all, I really did like this idea and thought that it could be really helpful. Im actually glad that a good group, took the time and effort to come up with a good idea.

Heat Guard

     I think Heat Guard was a good idea and one of my favorite projects that I got to see out of all the groups, and I like how well in depth they went into their research for their presentation. I also liked that it wasn't just an idea for a system that would save kids, but also pets because yeah nothing replaces the loss of a child, but owners can be pretty irresponsible when it comes to their pets too. Although, there seems to be more laws that punish for leaving pets in cars vs leaving kids in cars, I think  that the accidents and death rates when it comes to pets are probably (as they said) even less reported than accidents involving kids, so I think it was a smart idea to include a way for the system to help save pets. As a whole, I think that the idea for the system was good, although I do wonder, if the system would still be needed in the near future in case it's like a possible technology that is already being considered for futuristic cars? Although, then again, maybe cars will not be that advanced in two to five years, so it could still be worthwhile in the moment? Which brings me to another question, since the system would be connected via app and Bluetooth to a person's phone, wouldn't the system be pretty susceptible to hacking?

   

A Catfish with 15 Lives

In the movie Catfish, Nev first forms a friendship with a young girl named Abby. At first it consists of the sending and receiving of Nev’s pictures and Abby’s paintings, but as this friendship goes on, Nev begins to grow close with the rest of the family, especially with Abby’s mother Angela and sister Megan. In the span of six months, Nev develops a romantic relationship with Megan through Facebook, phone calls, and texts.

The truth about the family begins to unfold when Nev, his brother, and their friend discover exact recordings of the songs Megan claims to be originally sung by her online, but under different names. This leads to a flood of questions about who the family really is and what else they have been lying to Nev about. To get answers, Nev’s brother and friend convince him to go and visit the family. Before confronting the family, they decide to first stop by the house Megan apparently lives in only to find out that it is abandoned with no sign of anyone recently living there. This of course leaves Nev hurt as he is learning that this girl he’s been getting to know has been repeatedly lying to him.

The next morning, Nev, his brother, and friend go to Abby’s house to find out the truth, or at least meet whoever has been behind everything. They are first greeted by a woman named Angela who turns out to really be Abby’s mother. Nev plays along as she attempts to drag on the stories she has built up even though they can clearly see that she looks nothing like the woman she claims to be on Facebook. Nev does get to meet Abby, but while she is the same girl shown online, she was never the one who painted the paintings like they said. Everything points back to Angela as they discover more and more of the truth.

Nev ends up confronting Angela about the lies, and she finally gives in and reveals everything as she owes it to him. Nev learns that there was no Megan that he has been talking to and that it has always been Angela. Every Facebook account, phone call, and text message had been set up by her. Nev does not, however, get angry with her for all she has put him through, but instead feels bad for her for what has led her to do such a thing.

Usually when the intentions for catfishing are not malicious, they are for much more depressing reasons. For Angela, she lives a life where she is responsible for three children, two of which have disabilities. Although she does not seem to mind it all, she seems to feel trapped with the life she has come to have. For her, living through these fake accounts and personalities was her way of experiencing the life she wished to have. Although her intentions were not to harm another, it is still not morally right to do such a thing for the effect it will have on others like Nev.

Global Help

The purpose of the Global Help website is a great idea. It allows for easier donations for people who think the whole process of donating is inconvenient. I also like the idea of verifying charity organizations. It is a great way for people to build trust with these organizations and not worry if their money is actually going to be used for the cause. With people needing aid throughout the world, this is a great way to get more support for the organizations that provide aid. 

I really like the layout of the website. It is very easy to navigate and all you have to do is pick an area of the world and choose a charity from the resulting list to donate to or take a participate in. Due to this easy navigation, it would only take a person a few minutes of their time to get a website and send in a few dollars. Though, one thing about the website is the color of the text. The red makes the text a bit hard to read on each area's charity page due to the background messing with the text.

One thing that I think should be added or change to the website is the countries. There is only four countries and a continent featured on Global Help. Someone may also want to donate to a charity that helps people in Nicaragua or Zimbabwe for example. An expansion of countries featured on the website like Haiti or Eritrea would do great for it and bring more people to the social network. Maybe the website could have a layout like a person can select a continent, next, select a country and finally select a verified charity that aid in the vicinity.  Another thing is possibly filling out the About page some more? 

However, this is a great idea and it has a good start. If Global Help develops some more, this website is very worth looking into if I or someone I know want to donate to a charity organization. 

PTS-Talk

I think PTS-Talk is a great idea for a website. Personally, I think post-traumatic stress disorder is a huge problem that needs to be paid more attention to. I never really known anyone with PTSD but I have known or encountered people who have other mental disorders. So I have a slight idea of how problematic mental disorder can be for someone who have them. In my opinion, the mental scars can be potentially greater than the physical which it would  It would allow many people with post-traumatic stress syndrome or disorder to come together and help each other out. Sometimes it would do good to talk about your experiences as it is a coping method that helps people get past their trauma. The website would also be a good place to go for stories of people who managed to overcome their trauma for the inspiration of those who are still dealing with it.

I like how each person in the group gave their own personal experiences knowing or encountering people who have post-traumatic stress disorder in the presentation. I think it provides some huge background to the project and why it is needed.

 I like how there are different forums who share the same type of traumatic experiences like a combat experience or a medical accident. There's even a forum for miscellaneous for those who have experiences not covered by the other ones.

One of the things I like about this website the most is how "internet trolls" would be handled. We know how some of these trolls may look to this type of website to create problems for everyone like triggering someone with a picture or video. I like the plan that would be implemented to ensure that the people who go to PTS-Talk get the most of their experiences and not hindered by somebody who wanted to hurt someone.

If I or someone else I know develops PTSD, I would surely direct myself or someone else to the PTS-Talk.

Teddy bear Vengence

             This was one of the most disturbing films we have watched in this class. A women wanders a small town filled with strangers obsessed with filming everyone who isn't also filming. She meets two others, male and female, who are also unaffected by whatever is causing these people to seek out others to film, however she is quickly assaulted by a masked man with a shotgun and the male stranger is gunned down. As she and the remaining woman attempt to escape they run into more masked people, however these appear to be straight from the purge. They continue through their adventures and eventually she tries to kill on of the purge people with a shotgun, only to discover that the entire ordeal was all an act. She is reminded of a crime she committed and explained that her ordeal was all just part of her punishment. She is lead back to her starting point as everything is put back into place. As they erase her memory to reset the day she begs for death.
             The entire location is some sort of amusement park and all the seemingly hypnotized people were actually just paying customers. It's disturbing to see that all these people have come to witness the torture of this woman in what is essentially a living hell.

White Bear

“White bear” was about a lady who wakes up with amnesia. She later finds out that she is a target. The whole time people were filming and taking pictures with their phones. While getting shot at she hides with a girl is also suppose to be a target. The girl befriends her and tries to lead her to safety. We later find out it was all a show and it was a punishment for her. She and her boyfriend kidnapped a little girl. While her boyfriend tortured and killed the little girl and the woman filmed the whole. Her boyfriend took the cowardly way out by committing suicide. As for her, her punishment was reliving what the child felt over and over again and they made it an amusement park.  

The episode brought many questions including those about the mentally ill. Being mentally ill and committing a horrible crime can go two ways: either you knew about your illness, and chose not to take the necessary precautions to make sure they were in the correct mind, or they knew about their illness, but their meds were not working at all. For those who chose to not take their medications, then punishment is justified; they cannot use the excuse of being mentally unstable to stay out of prison. Of course, rehabilitation is a choice but what are the chances the culprit will continue to take their medication? The person is now a threat to society.

As for making it an amusement park and making her do it all over every day that is just wrong.

There is an anime that similar to it. Once you’re incriminated you’re taken to this facility. Next to the facility is an amusement park. All of the criminals have to wear a collar it’s for disciplinary and to kill you. In the facility, all of the people that are incriminated were sentenced to death. When it is your time to go the collar electrocutes you and you die. Since the “prison” is owned by a private owner the rules changed. You can get food and add time to your death sentence by competing in the games at the amusement park most of them a set to kill you and only one survivor is to win. At the park, you can see people of all ages and they are really enjoying it.

Even though if I had the chance to go to the park I would.

Be Right Back: Is this practical

I know we've all lost loved ones and have wished that we can get to see them one more time; well in the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back" that wish has become a reality. After losing her partner a woman gets an android look a like to "cope" with the pain of losing her loved one. The question I believe should be looked at before we began developing technologies for this is: is this truly healthy and is this form of "coping"  actually helpful or more so harmful to the human mental state. I personally believe that this is a not a healthy way of coping with loss. It doesn't give you a chance to to truly deal with the loss and mourn like you should because technically the person is still there. The more damaging part I believe is the attachment that grows with the android. In the begining of the show the young lady broke her phone that she was using to communicate with her "deceased" loved one and had a horrific breakdown in the middle of the doctors office. The attachment grows unhealthy because you're attaching the feelings you once had with a true human being with an object that can not reciprocate those feelings and is just as likely to "die" which can bring back those feelings of stress and depression. Sending you back to that mourning stage and constantly recycling the process. You begin to associate these human characteristics with it but yet they are not a human so there will be moments when they act in "inhuman ways" or "unlike" you're loved one and in those moments you will be triggered and will act out in rash ways. In the episode the young lady attempts to force the   android to commit an extreme act and does not go thruogh with it due to the feelings she had attached to it. Although it may seem good that she has prevented this act it also shows that she has attached feelings to this android and this could eventually damage her mental well being later on. So no I do not believe that this is the most practical way of dealing with loss.

Catfish Rodeo

         The film Catfish is a perfect example of how easy it is to be anyone on the web. It may shock some people how easily it is to pose as either another existing person or your own Frankenstein creation. Note how easy Angela was able to be several people at once, and how long she was able to keep up this charade without even making Nev suspicious. However she eventually gets careless and her story begins to unravel as holes begin to form.
          It begins with her copying a song and posing it as, her as Megan. Nev and his friends find the original and become skeptical. As time progresses they uncover more and more of the flaws in her story. They find that Abbey's studio is not owned by her and that Megan doesn't live at the farm she mentioned. When Nev finally confronts Angela about her web of lies she confesses, almost. After meeting her she still continues to lie on several things. She lies about having cancer, and about Megan being in rehab. In the end she still remains in contact with Nev, but it is difficult to be sure what exactly is true of her, as she has proven that she will lie about almost anything.

Catfish: Not that hard to catch

Catfish the movie was made in 2010 and since then social media and technology has advanced tremendously. With the lack of privacy that comes with social media and influx of pictures  and personal information that people post through out the day it is very easy to claim someone else's identity and pass it off. On the latter the advancements in technology have made it so much easier to catch catfish since the 2010 movie. There is little room for excuses as to why you should end up caught in a catfish net when there are so many holes to escape. Somewhere around 223 million people have an smart phone of some sorts and all of these smartphones have the capability of video chatting in some way or another and so do most laptops and tablets. Now I understand that yeah not everyone has access to such fancy technology but you can always be a little old fashioned with it and purchase a handy dandy webcam; only $7.39 at your local Walmart. Now you're probably thinking "Omg not everyone has internet access, or a computer, or a cellphone..... blah blah blah." You're coming up with a whole slew of excuses as to why this person could possibly not be a catfish and hey it is possible that the person you met online has dropped there phone directly on the front facing camera so they can't face time you, and when they do finally get it fixed you find out that they're a vampire so y'all can only video chat in the dark. Lord forbid they contract an immuno deficiency disorder so you cant voice call them  because there throat is always soar and although they only live 30 minutes from your house you can't go see them because of there super over bearing parents keeper them locked away in a huge tower although they are 25 year old adult. Now lets have a moment of honesty; if the person you are communicating with has all of these different problems going on in there life they really should be focusing on themselves and not pursuing a relationship. Lol hold up... how did y'all even meet if they had no internet access in the first place ... aww ok. In order to spot a catfish you gotta be honest with yourself and look at the situation logically. So like the good saying goes, " if it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and walks like a duck then it must certainly be a duck."

Catfish

Catfishing" is a now problem. The process of presenting oneself as another or as a fraud completely is becoming increasingly more difficult to be involved in. You can never fully know whether that person that you met on some dating site is who they say they are. People ensnare individuals into their web and force those that were ensnared to develop feelings for them.

There are key factors involved in identifying a catfish. Most times a catfish will try to avoid all in person encounters as well as any type of interaction that may require them to show themselves to you in a real-time, live type of situation.

Most people that encounter catfishes react irrationally. However, Nev surprised me when he was being more understanding and trying to be more knowledgeable on the situation. He wanted to know the reason behind it. He wasn't just satisfied with realizing e was catfished.

Tech Know

     Tech-Know is a very ambitious and creative idea. They plan to have a massive collection of all sorts of technological advancements. They also plan to keep everything impartial so that the readers can form their own ideas on how technology is advancing. While I think it is a great idea to have all this information in one place, I think that Tech-Know is a little too ambitious. The fact that there is just so much going on in tech development means that the people working on the website would have to constantly looking up new information. This would be fine if they were focusing on a single type of technology. However, they clearly state in their website that they are trying to provide resources for all current technologies. This would require a large number of people to be constantly looking around at different sources and fact checking them so that their readers have a steady flow of information. It would be very difficult to build up this workforce and even more difficult to find a way to pay them.

     Another issue with Tech-Know is on their focus on being impartial. While this sounds like a great idea, it would be very difficult to actually go out and do it. They would have to go out of their way to make sure that there is not more positive or more negative information on each topic. Another major issue with being impartial is that it would be very difficult to find people who would support the website. It would be hard to get tech companies and the government to back the website because they do not really get anything out of it. Sure, they get the information on what they are doing out to people. But since Tech-Know wants to tell both sides of the story, they cannot be sure that Tech-Know will not hurt business more than help it.

     It has its flaws, but Tech-Know is certainly a good idea. While it may be very difficult to start up, it could easily become a valuable resource for people who just want to keep up with how tech is changing the world.

PTS Talk

     PTS talk was an interesting was a very interesting way to try and provide help for people to struggle with PTSD. It was simple easy to access and had several resources to help the people that have issues with their PTSD. All a person needs to do is find their website, sign up, and then they are able to find people with their own PTSD troubles. The many links to hospital websites really helps those who need more professional help. These small details along with the presenters’ personal stories really draws attention to the fact that they really are really dedicated to the idea of PTS Talk. They want to help as many as they can. Their presentation was also really easy to understand. They gave a clear definition of what PTSD is and they also gave clear idea of how PTSD is not easy to deal with by yourself. Everyone knew what they were talking about and they all had their own personal stories to tell. Overall, they had built up a really good idea that could probably help a lot of people.

     While the general idea was very sound, I still had issues with the website. While they have the general framework of the website down, it still needs a lot of work. A few ways that they could improve is by making the website a little bit more colorful and welcoming. As it is right now, almost everything is black letters with a white background. If they made it a little more colorful, more people would find the website inviting. Another issue that I had was with their forums. While they do have many different topics to share on, they seem kind of divided from each other. A good way to solve this is to set up a way to view all the forums together and set them apart through tags. This will really help people who don’t really know what the cause of their PTSD is from and will also help people whose PTSD stems from several different issues.

PTS-Talk, 12pm

     I have heard of forums before and chat-rooms where people of same interests or experiences can talk, but I have yet to hear of a forum and idea like PTS-Talk. I think the group did a great job with their presentation and their research, and I personally think their project was a really good idea. When it comes to PTSD, maybe it's just me and people are more aware now, but I feel like it is one of those conditions people have heard of but don't know what it is like or how vastly it affects people in their daily lives. I feel like with this project the group helped shine more light on the condition, while also coming up with a possibly good way of coping for people with PTSD. I liked that they split up the different forums by the type of event that caused the PTSD which I thought was a good way of organizing things and keeping it from being too chaotic for a website that is trying to do good, and the idea of having monitors for the forums was also good because hello, it's the internet--when do things not go badly in online chat-rooms? Besides keeping things organized, I also think that splitting the forums like that was a nice idea because usually when you think PTSD, you think war and veterans, but PTSD is more than that and can affect a wide range of people, so the splitting of forums was a neat feature for those with different cases of PTSD outside of war who also need a way to cope.

   I know that during their presentation they said that people that went with the intention of causing damage would get suspended or blocked from the site, but I was also wondering if they would maybe consider adding a 'mute-words' feature like twitter and tumblr? I mean obviously the site is to speak freely, but maybe there is a particular word that 'triggers' one user but doesn't affect others. I think this could be a possible feature to consider when it comes to users making their profiles, but other than that, I think the project was great as a whole and definitely well thought out.