Final Post

            Never in my life had I come up with an idea that I thought I could actually pursue. I have always been in love with journalism. The news media fascinates me and the shift of newspapers to the web is what drove to start learning IST. In the crossing between journalism and IST I found this idea, and it has since fascinated me.

            Whoever denies that the newspaper business is in a precarious state is dead wrong. Countless newspapers have gone under because they have been forced to the web to survive, but once there have found it impossibly hard to draw readers to their site and away form the overwhelming web-wide competition. Without the readers, they could make money off of advertisements and various newspapers became the first to crawl towards extinction, putting up a fight until bankruptcy claimed another victim.

            Myheadline.com could become a solution to the decline of newspaper readership. By creating a single site that could serve as a marketplace for newspapers and magazines, accessibility to the news media would be increased. This idea has already been explored by a number of aggregator sites such as feedbucket.com and alltop.com. These sites create a feed in which you could insert all types of sites, with the intention of creating a constant news feed from various sources. However, this is only a weak jab at the possibilities that aggregating news sources could have.

            While my original idea was simply an aggregator site like so many others with a news feed from varied sources, I now realize what an impact a news-dedicated social media website could have. Myheadline.com will exceed the simple newsfeed. It will incorporate aspects of social media sites to facilitate the reading and sharing of a wide array of news stories. The idea is for people to create a user account, much like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin accounts, that will allow the user to subscribe to a variety of local and national newspapers that will then appear in a single home. This will facilitate the user to browse through several sources of news simultaneously.

             The user will also be able to share stories they find interesting or important to fellow Myheadline.com users. Furthermore, the website will follow the type of stories the user finds interesting so that in the future stories of that type continue to appear in the users home page. This will be facilitated through a function called “highlighting,” in which users “highlight” the stories they find interesting.  The number of times a story gets “highlighted” by users is recorded so that stories can be ranked in importance and interest. Commenting on stories is also an option, so that users can engage on discussions about news stories.

            In short, it is wrong to say that Myheadline.com would facilitate the consumption of news. Myheadline.com would utterly revolutionize the way news is consumed in our society.

Lecture Post - Operating Systems

Myheadline.com will be a social media website that facilitates the reading and sharing of a wide array of news stories. The idea is for people to create a user account, much like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin accounts, that will allow the user to subscribe to a variety of local and national newspapers that will then appear in a single home. This will facilitate the user to browse through several sources of news simultaneously.

         This week in class operating systems were discussed. We touched upon the different pros and cons that each operating system has in terms of running different kinds of software and how operating systems differ for personal computers, servers and handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets.

 I was interested the most by two aspects of different operating systems that came up in our discussion. Firstly, I was interested in how specific software can run on some operating systems and not on others. For example, some of my friends are into an online game called League of Legends and they are capable of playing it because they use Windows operating systems on their computers. However, if one were to try to play League of Legends on a Mac OS, one would find that the gameplay is significantly worse and that the program would be riddled with bugs that make it completely unpractical to attempt to play. This interests me a lot because, as a company trying to profit from their game, League of Legends loses a large number of potential users simply because the game only runs well on Windows OS. That is a lot of money lost. In my entrepreneurial project, I would make sure that my website and the software associated with is compatible with as many operating as possible.

Also, for a company to remain competitive in todays market, there is a need for an app that runs efficiently and on as many embedded operating systems as possible. This becomes interesting when one understands the differences in creating an app to run on Google Android, iPhone OS or BlackBerry, for example. The differences in getting the app published also differs, as some embedded OS’s are open source, like Google Android, and others are not, like iPhone OS. 

Lecture Post - Cloud Computing

Myheadline.com will be a social media website that facilitates the reading and sharing of a wide array of news stories. The idea is for people to create a user account, much like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin accounts, that will allow the user to subscribe to a variety of local and national newspapers that will then appear in a single home. This will facilitate the user to browse through several sources of news simultaneously.

Last week we touched upon the topic of cloud computing in class. Cloud computing is essentially a way of storing information and files in the "cloud" so that it does not take memory space in your physical location. Basically, this is achieved by storing everything in a remote location, in servers that are usually connected to your actual computer through the web. A lot of the things we use, such as music providers like Spotify and even our E-Mails, store our information in such a way. If you're computer is destroyed, you don't loose your mail or music, because it is in the "cloud."

This technology is pertinent to my entrepreneurial idea because MyHeadline.com would be a website that, to function properly, would require an enormous amount of memory. For example, the personal information of the users must be stored as well as all the articles and newspaper archives so that the website can work. The feat of storing such a massive database of articles and private personal information can be accomplished through the use of cloud computing.