Monday, October 26, 2009

Foursquare

I absolutely love the idea of Foursquare and wish they had it implemented in the Tampa area. However, I think the technology of the program should be used only as a social network for adults. Although many might think that this is a good way for parents to keep tabs on where their children are, I believe that constant monitoring of a kid's whereabouts is wrong. Children in the United States cannot obtain their driver's license until the age of 16. Any kid under this age needs their parents to drive them to places or have a friend pick them up from their home. In either situation, the parents would be able to know where their child was going (unless they have a child who lies without reason, in which case, there are more serious issues at hand).

Although this is a new program from monitoring a person's whereabout, the idea has been in the works for awhile. GPS is a relatively old technology and programs including Foursquare are only building on it. In the future, I expect to see a number of location monitoring programs that parents can use to track their kids, through the GPS in their phone and in cars, letting the parents know what destination the user has entered as well as the time and date.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Simulated World's Economy

No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You

In the current economic state, it is totally plausible to me that people would go to the online world to indulge in material items that they can not afford in the real world. On the fashion note, buying clothing is often about spending to get satisfaction and less about the actual item purchased. One can translate this experience to a virtual platform and get this satisfactory feeling without the guilt of spending the money they might need for food or housing.
Yet, I find it hard to understand why anyone would pay real money to get a bank account of fake currency. Sure you get more bang for your buck in the online world, but for all the money you spend, you get nothing of actual substance. It might be worth the initial investment for the experience, but if you don't monitor your bank account or save and earn interest, you'll be out of dough quick and really to put up even more cash. This nullifies the reasons to start playing in this online world in the first place: to save money and indulge in a conscious way. With all the money you end up spending, you could have just gone out and bought the real Louboutins you wanted.

Monday, October 5, 2009