Extra credit-conference proposals

The third meeting with writing tutors was about conference proposals. They were talking about why to write proposals,what to include/exclude and how to write for this audience.

Writing a proposal (sometimes called an abstract) for an academic conference can be difficult, especially for graduate students who are new to the process. The key to a successful proposal is knowing what kind of information to include and how to frame it. With some heavy editing, however, you can make even a still-nascent idea sound like a wonderful paper. they also give us some tips for writing this:

Do not fear rejection. Conference papers are chosen for a variety of reasons, and a topic's merit is only one of them. Often, organizers are more interested in choosing papers with related themes rather than simply choosing the best papers, so do not be discouraged by rejection. Just try again.

Extra credit-resume writing

                         The second meeting with writing tutors was how to write a good resumeSuccess in finding your dream job depends largely upon having a dynamite resume. .Writing a great resume does not necessarily mean you should follow the rules you hear through the grapevine. It does not have to be one page or follow a specific resume format. Every resume is a one-of-a-kind marketing communication. It should be appropriate to your situation and do exactly what you want it to do. Instead of a bunch of rules and tips, they were going to cut to the chase in a brief guide and offer people the most basic principles of writing a highly effective resume.

Best sample resumes  will guide you, through the entire process as you:

Develop a winning resume strategy

Write each line of your resume to make the most of your qualification

Create a great format for your resume

Distribute new resume to employers

Extra credit-Plagiarism

First meeting was talking about Plagiarism. Plagiarism as defined by Quick Access Reference for Writers is "using someone else's intellectual property without permission or credit.During the meeting, those writing tutors were taught us some skills how to avoid plagiarism: Always document your sources; Acknowledge other ideas, words or images; become familar with citation style require by your discipline. There are kinds of knowledge needs to be documented:Quotations,summeries or parahases,ideas from a source,graphs,tables and statistical data, photographs, other people's expet iments, facts that aren't widely known, videos or sounds taken from another source. Sometimes people they are over citing also,they just have to make sure their voice is being projected and develop their own ideas. Those were very useful information and I learned a lot from this meeting.

Social network sites:definition,history,and scholorship

social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.
In this article, is also mention the new technology about QQ in China. Every chinese people know about QQ and use it for communicate chatting tool. Tencent was founded in Shen zhen, China, in 11 November 1998, by Ma Huangteng. Tencent's instant messaging service platform "QQ" was formally launched in February 1999. After years of strong business growth, on July 16, 2004, Tencent Holdings Limited  went public.
Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant message computer program in Main land China, and according to its statistics, the number of simultaneous online QQ accounts exceeds 100 million. In October 2010, QQ.com ranked 9^th overall in Alexa's  Internet ranking just after Twitter ranked 10th.The program is maintained by Tencent Holdings Limited owned in part by Naspers. Since its entrance into Chinese households QQ quickly emerged as a modern cultural phenomenon, now being portrayed in popular culture. Aside from the chat program, QQ has also developed many subfeatures including games, virtual pets, ringtone downloads, etc.

http://thechinaobserver.com/2008/12/the-language-and-branding-of-qq-in-china/
http://www.brianprenderville.com/15/post/2010/05/first-post.html

A conversation about journalism and technology

those traditional news companies that are hiring? They aren’t looking for the same old thing any longer. A spirit of innovation is mandatory, previous experience is not. If you are willing to learn new ways of communicating to – and with – an audience, including inventing some of your own, you’re ready for a job in a new era news business.It's easy to create your own blog—a good-looking one, with text, photos and links to other sites—in a flash, no technical know-how required.
A newsreader will get a website's content in the form of a feed—essentially a list of headlines, with summaries, excerpts or the full text of each item, and links that take you back to the source. Feeds come in one of three formats: RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication), XML or Atom. If a site offers a feed, you'll usually see a tiny icon or link on the home page.


http://journalism.about.com/

Facebook Passes EBay in Value, Becoming No. 3 U.S. Web Company,private information shared,scary?

 Facebook Inc.’s estimated worth is now bigger than EBay Inc.’s valuation, making it the third- largest U.S. Internet business and underscoring the growing allure of social media for investors.

Facebook’s stock is trading at more than $16 on SecondMarket Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies, said a person familiar with the latest pricing data. That would put its worth at about $41 billion, more than EBay’s $39.3 billion valuation on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Facebook only trails Amazon.com Inc., worth $74.4 billion, and Google Inc., valued at $192.9 billion, among U.S. Internet companies.

1. Facebook Saves Things That Have Been Deleted
Whatever status updates or unglamorous pictures of you are still inside the server somewhere. A word of advice, think carefully and be tactful when uploading photos or making a status update.

2. Facebook Knows Your Viewing History
Log of clicks are used by Facebook to determine your viewing history. Hence, it knows whose photos you are going through.

3. Facebook Knows How Often You Interact With Or Click On The Profile Of A Given Person
Depending on the number of visits you made on your friend’s profile, Facebook uses this data as a method to judge who your good friends are. This is visible through Facebook search where your friends are not listed in alphabetical order but by the people who you interact most with.

4. Facebook Carries Out Psychological Tests On New Features
Instead of doing group sampling or beta testing on their new features, Facebook does the above plus eye ball tracking to get an idea of where you are looking at.

5. Facebook Employees Are Able To Retrieve Any Message You’ve Sent Out
Since all data are stored in the server, employees have the clearance to pull out any data about you through a simple query on your profile.

Whether the interview was a hoax or made-up, I think what’s more important is that people should be more tactful when they are online. In the real world, people may forgive and forget but in the virtual world, there are always traces of data that could be used against you.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-15/facebook-passes-ebay-in-value-becoming-no-3-u-s-web-company.html

Naomi Baron

As a linguist, Baron in interested in computer-mediated communication, writing and technology, language in social context, language acquisition, and the history of English. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and president of the Semiotic Society of America, she has published seven books. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008.
Baron taught at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, Emory University, and Southwestern University before coming to American University in 1987. At AU, she has served as associate dean for undergraduate affairs, associate dean for curriculum and faculty development, and chair of the Department of Language and Foreign Studies in CAS. She was named University Honors Program Professor of the Year and received an AU Presidential Research Fellowship. Baron also teaches in the AU TESOL program and is currently doing cross-cultural research on mobile phones.


Here are some more links for Dr.Naomi Baron's speeches:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tpwYsvHWBA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yad7XoMQyio&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3hYXAueYRU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4lUBNgcIw&feature=related

Second life

Second Life is a computer-simulated environment which users inhabit. They interact with the environment via their on-screen representatives known as avatars. An avatar is a person in Second Life. People in second Life are referred to as residents. Second Life is a social environment where people learn, explore, work, shop and play.
The day what we getting to know this new technology was amazing. This new technology can make people have their real second life in the internet world. People can chatting, have meetings, go shopping,dating in this second world.This new interesting technology can also increase world trade economy.
Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other users. Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna, and works of art. Services include "camping", wage labor, business management, entertainment and custom content creation (which can be broken up into the following 6 categories: building, texturing, scripting, animating, art direction, and the position of producer/project funder). L$ can be purchased using US Dollars and other currencies on the LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab, independent brokers or other resident users. Money obtained from currency sales is most commonly used to pay Second Life's own subscription and tier fees; only a relatively small number of users earn large amounts of money from the world.
Some companies generate US dollar earnings from services provided in Second Life.




http://secondlife.com/whatis/?sourceid=0410-sergoog-slSecondLife-wisl&gclid=CPSautf1m6UCFU465QodSUmSIA