April 3rd, 2009 — 7:29pm
This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on April 3, 2009.
I’ve always wanted to be a meteorologist.
The forecast? Cloudy. Well, the technological forecast, anyway. The next big Internet innovation is cloud computing.
In this case, the “cloud” represents the intricacies of all of the interconnected computers on the Internet. Cloud computing is a way to store your data on the Internet and make it accessible anywhere, through any computer.
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March 17th, 2009 — 7:27pm
This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on March 16, 2009.
In the spirit of the World Wide Web’s 20th birthday last Friday, I’d like to celebrate my favorite thing on the Web right now: Twitter.
On the surface, it is deceptively simple. It’s a social network and a micro-blogging tool in which you exchange 140-character updates with your “followers.” These blurbs are publicly visible by default, but can be restricted to just your friends.
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February 17th, 2009 — 7:25pm
This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on February 2, 2009.
The information highway just got a little more crowded. There are now more than 1 billion people on the Internet, according to comScore, an Internet research firm. The Internet’s democratization of information has made a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge easily accessible. However, this also has its pitfalls.
Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, wrote, “The notion that the world’s knowledge is literally at your fingertips is very compelling and is very beguiling.”
The question remains: Is the Internet making us stupid?
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November 19th, 2008 — 7:18pm
This column was first published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on November 19, 2008.
Don’t be evil – as the Google mantra goes. Or at least, be a little evil for the greater good.
Immediately after Google’s introduction of their new project, Google Flu Trends, the Cassandra cries roared from privacy groups. Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, yet cursed so that no one would believe her predictions. This is no Cassandra, though; and there is certainly no privacy infringement disaster on the horizon.
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My name is Millie — I enjoy traveling, low maintenance plants, hiking, reading and running. And, sometimes I write. If the computer is a bicycle for the mind, I can ride pretty fast.