Omegle / Meet Up

1.   Both Omegle and Meet Up serve the purpose of meeting other people, and even sometimes meeting people with a specific interest that may match up with yours.  On Omegle especially you are constantly beginning new conversations, and new relationships.  When thinking about the different stages of relational development using Omegle you may initiate, differentiate, and terminate up to fifteen relationships within the first five minutes of using the tool.  While this is all a form of online interpersonal communication I feel that there is no way to truly connect using this tool.  However, on Meet Up you are able to find others who enjoy doing similar activities that you do and from that first connection I believe a lasting relationship can be forged. 
2. Omegle is used to talk to complete strangers, about absolutely random topics or one of your choosing.  Meet Up is used to find others with similar interests that you have and then go out and participate in those activities.  Both of these tools are a different form of interpersonal communication used to meet other people and make connections.  As a social media tool both of these succeed, however, as a tool being used to forge connections only Meet Up succeeds.
3. I thought that both Omegle and Meet Up were a unique way to communicate with people that you would not ordinarily meet.  With all of the millions of different specific niches in this world it is nice to have a site that has an easy way to find other people who want to do the same activities as you.  As far as social media sites go I actually enjoyed Meet Up and I am the first person to condemn any and all forms of social media.
4. On Omegle I found it extremely difficult to find a person who was actually on that site to talk seriously about a topic.  Most of the people on that site simply wish to be crude, and swear, and play on stereotypical biases to be ignorant.  Those individuals completely turned me off to using that site ever again.  On Meet Up you are able to find specific niche activity such as Lego Motion picture group. However this tool pulls from all over and these activities may be anywhere from five to 1,000 miles away.  It is sometimes difficult to find certain activities nearby your area.  You can set a search parameter of a specific amount of miles, but this limits your results.
5. Omegle in my opinion completely complicates communication because of all the ignorance that runs rampant through the users.  Meet Up on the other-hand most takes their users on a more personal level using their specific interests to make connections, and then from that it is up to the users to make lasting connections "in person" using face-to-face communication.  What I really enjoyed is the combination of online and offline communication used to make a successful social media tool.
6. On an overall basis I enjoyed learning about these new tools, mainly because of my intense love for everything technology.  Just because I love technology does not mean I will warmly embrace every new innovation.  I found Omegle disturbing and an all-in-all failure and Meet Up was a success in which I enjoyed using.

Response to Blogging

1.  Blogging online is a chance for all of the internet to see what you create and to weigh in on what they like and do not like in an open and honest format.  Knowing that blogs are view-able to the entire internet some users may want to be very conservative about what they post knowing that everyone will be able to see it.  On the other hand some people may want to post everything about themselves but under an alias, an alternate identity.  When blogging or using any sort of online social media it gives the user a chance to pick an identity for online that may or may not be different from offline. 
2. Blogging allows users to post data about any topic so that others can easily view it without having to download anything, or sign up for an online subscription.  The fact that the data is available free makes blogging such a nice way to post homework questions to get feedback, or to talk about a computer problem and get troubleshooting advice.  With each different problem raised in life you can be sure to find a blog specific to that problem.  With so many blogs out there now it is very easy to be your own IT guy, and to be your own TA.
3. I found that while blogging I lost track of time completely when I was searching for new widgets to put on my page, or when I was looking to customize the fonts.  Any time I get really interesting by a new area of technology I immerse myself in it deeply so that I can get a full understanding of it.  With my love of technology I found it simply awesome that I was able to install a hit counter right on my page.  I had seen them before on other sites, but it was just so rewarding that I was able to do that myself.
4. Finding widgets to put on my site and where to place them I found easy, but when it came to all the minute details such as background colors, and fonts I found it challenging to know how to change the correct one.  I remember I was looking around the advanced settings of the font colors for a good fifteen to twenty minutes just trying to figure out how to change the background color on my hit counter from black to transparent.  I eventually figured it out and now I know for future reference.
5. I believe that blogging is a bittersweet technology.  It allows you to see many different points of view on any given topic and to find answers to homework or computer problems, but like other online technologies it detracts from our offline communication.  When blogging users may get in the habit of being disingenuous because of the low accountability factor involved with the guise of a screen-name. In our offline communications individuals tend to be more genuine in conversations because you know who you are talking to.  Blogging is a blessing and a curse to our social lives.
6. On a whole I only enjoy blogging when it comes to the technology side of it.  I truly loved creating my blog and personalizing it to what I wanted it to look like, but past that I am still a firm believer in interpersonal communication in person.  I feel that communication in person is the most meaningful and lasting.  Any relationship I have made in my life I have made face-to-face, and by that same token I maintain these relationships face-to-face as well.  Blogging may help some aspects of life, but it certainly hurts our face-to-face communication.