CHARISM

My group and I have been working hard these past three weeks with CHARISM. This local non-profit is dedicated to providing outreach programs for low-income children and families. We have just started enacting our strategic plan this week. So far we have been posting on Twitter and updating the Facebook. It seems to me that everything is going well, but it’s unbelievable how many elements I didn’t realize existed in promoting a non-profit. It’s definitely a lot different than just updating a personal account.

Skyrim and Reddit?

My new media chapter is going to basically be about the online community, Reddit. I have a lot of ideas floating around, but I recently I have been playing Skyrim, so right now I am focusing on how Reddit has been feeding my addiction.

Here’s a screen shot of the game! (This isn’t me, but my character looks very similar)

It’s basically a RPG and my character (a dark elf mage) is given a lot of different quests and ultimately I am supposed to defeat this big ugly dragon (who wants to enslave the human race). LUCKILY! All of Skyrim has me (Hannah) to save them, so they will not become slaves of the evil dragons.

Like I said, I don’t start off on the quest to save the human race, instead I have to battle a bunch of smaller monsters on the way to the final boss (which will take me like 200 hours or more). Also, these quests are pretty detailed and sometimes I will miss a key part, so I check Reddit and there is ALWAYS someone that can help me out. SO maybe I could do a section about Reddit and RPGs…I’m not sure I’ll have to continue to think.

Brewster Kahle

Have you ever heard of Brewster Kahle?? I haven’t either until I was stumbling upon things today and ran across an article about him on ted.com. Apparently he is building a huge internet archives and so far it’s offering over 85 billion pieces of web geology. I wasn’t sure if he meant geology in the typical sense of the word, but apparently it’s a giant archive of the history of the internet. I’m just going to assume that all over our blogs are going to be archived, but I kind of don’t mind, especially since his service is free for the public.

Here is the video of him talking about his massive digital library.
brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html

This is a really great idea, I feel like more things should be free to the public. It seems like money and greed are going to be the end of us all, except those fortunate few.

I think this is his library website- It’s pretty cool, I was looking through the banned books section and basically you can read almost anything plus he has made the files available in PDF, EPUB, Kindle, etc.

Impression of Second Life

After initially reading Levinson’s chapter on Second Life I was really excited to get started with week 6. I thought that Second Life would be a mixture of The Sims and some type of RPG, like World of Warcraft or Lineage. However, after a week of play I was kind of disappointed by my experience.

My Second Life adventure on my Macbook- On Sunday night I created my avatar, I wasn’t thrilled about any of the humanoids, so I decided to be a boat that looked a lot like something I might read about in a steam punk novel. However, I soon found out that the boat was bulky and took forever to load into a recognizable shape. I then went to Paris and a few other cities, only to be disappointed because nothing would completely load on my Mac and in general everything seemed incredibly laggy. I also noted that my time of log in must have been a slow time of day for the program, because almost every city I visited only had one or two avatars in the entire vicinity.

I decided to try Second Life using a desktop after my first experience was less than satisfactory. I had hoped a desktop might take care of the lagginess I had experienced using a laptop. Unfortunately, I was wrong, the lagginess didn’t go away, the graphics didn’t load faster, and in general there weren’t any more people playing when I was online.

Despite the poor graphics and general lagginess those weren’t what really ruined my Second Life experience. Levinson mentioned in his chapter that you really have to pay for things in the program to have a great experience. Before playing I didn’t realize how right he was….For instance, I didn’t like any of the avatars and wasn’t willing to pay for better skins and everywhere I went it seem like everything cool would cost me money. BOO!

My final experience in Second Life was during my trip to the Dr. Who Museum. I love the show in real life and was really excited that something like that would exist on the serve, although I perhaps shouldn’t be surprised. However, I was again disappointed by the slow server, the poor graphics, and the amount of money I would have to spend to actually enjoy visiting the museum.

This is a picture of my avatar looking at a Dr. Who Museum poster.

I think I will stick to The Sims and Lineage.

Self Driving Cars?!

I saw an article today that basically says that Nevada will be the first state to self-regulate vehicles. It’s  interesting that the car is being developed by none other than Google. The vehicle will self-regulate itself by using radar, sensors and computers allowing the car to essentially drive, however, humans can still ultimately override the system.

Watch the video:

I love how it is being developed by Google! It seems like such a futuristic idea. Plus, that ride looks absolutely insane.  As Google drives your car you can text and email safely!  Just think on the way to class you could be finishing your homework!

New Glasses!

Today I went to get new glasses and I was kind of shocked that they now offer high definition lenses! Seriously, the sales person said they are supposed to make things look brighter, etc. just like watching a TV with HD! I wanted to try them, but didn’t really want to spend the money buying them since I am kind of skeptical. Does anyone in class have these lenses? Can you tell that colors look better? How can lenses make you see brighter colors than you are capable of seeing??

Are people going too far with social media?

Last weekend I went to The Woman in Black and I was kind of appalled at how many people kept taking out their cell phones to check text messages or their Facebook walls. Even more annoying than all of the cell phones was the couple in front of me playing with their Ipad the entire time. I don’t think it would have bothered me normally, but The Woman in Black is a scary movie and the constant flash of cell phone screens kept distracting me. My experience at the movies coupled with other students using campus computer clusters for Facebook has kind of started to annoy me.

Anyways, when I woke up this morning I checked the Fargo news and saw the following video.

Seriously, its about 8 minutes long, but watch the entire thing! I’m not sure what to make of this, but I’m kind of glad he decided to confront his daughter’s actions. He said that his daughter, Hannah thought her parents wouldn’t see it, so do you think social media diminishes some of the responsibility people should feel for their actions? Do you think this guy went too far? I also think it’s interesting that he confronted his daughter’s act of social media defiance using another form of social media to discipline her. Is this the new age of parenting? I’m really fascinated by this and I’d like to hear everyone’s opinions!

YouTube Collaborations?

The impact YouTube has had on music is completely baffling to me. I can think of a few people off the top of my head that have become really successful using the YouTube channel: Justin Bieber, Charice, and obviously, Rebecca Black (har har). Despite the positive influence of YouTube on music, I also kind of worry about the detrimental effects it could have on less known artists. Specifically, I am referring to the many popular artists that have “borrowed” beats, lyrics, and combinations from less well known artists without giving credit where credit is due. A very well-known and publicized “borrowing” occurred with the Black Eyed Peas and a less known rapped, Phoenix Phenom. I know that Phoenix Phenom ended up suing the Black Eyed Peas for copyright, but I’m not entirely sure what eventually happened with the lawsuit.

However, despite the negative impact YouTube can have on less well known artists, there are also some positive collaborations coming out of the channel. For instance, I’m not really a rap fan, but it was interesting to me that Flo Rida’s new song, “Good Feeling” borrowed a portion of Avicii’s song, “Levels,” which in turn was obviously borrowed from Etta James.

Here is Flo Rida’a version of “Good Feeling,” it’s not terrible but I mostly just enjoy Avicci’s part.

 

Here is the actual Avicci track in case some of you are interested in electronica. Even if you don’t like the song at least the video is pretty entertaining.

 

Can anyone else think of anymore interesting collaborations?

Reddit?

I realize that this is an electronic communication class and I have been little bit disappointed that Levinson hasn’t really mentioned Reddit. He did however mention Digg, which seems to be the prototype of the current Reddit site. So, I guess what I am intending to do is to create a chapter with Reddit in mind. It seems to fit a hole that I have personally seen in Levinson’s writing and (most importantly- : ) ) it is interesting to me.

 

I am having a little bit of a difficult time coming up with subtopics concerning Reddit.

 

Politics- How does the Reddit community influence political campaigns?

 

Celebrity AMAs- Dr. Brooks mentioned Colbert. Maybe I could talk about how Woody Harrelson’s latest attempt at an AMA turned into a PR nightmare….maybe?

 

Perhaps a section about community charity? Reddit seems to be doing constant fundraisers, but then again I am not sure where this would fit

 

I also thought religion could be interesting, but Reddit is heavily skewed so I will have to think about this

Google VS Facebook

This is just a quick blog before I go to class, but I was just thinking about the new Facebook timeline as compared to Google+

At first I was really opposed to setting up a Google + account, which is weird because I actually had no idea what Google + was anyways. After setting up my circles and looking through all of the features, I decided I like it! It kind of mimics the original Facebook, but offers newer features that separate it from the current, cluttered Facebook timeline. I almost wonder if Facebook’s new timeline and constant presence of ads will be the end to the social media site. What does everyone else think about the timeline portion of Facebook?