Week 4: Videopodcast Review - "Plasticky Goodness"

"PLASTICKY GOODNESS"

"Plasticky Goodness" is truly the epitome of geniusness. Plastic guitars can go a long way! The members of "The Guitar Zeros" have shown that when you find what you're passionate about and really put your mind into it, nothing is impossible. It opens up options for those who wants to learn music in a different way. This videopodcast was able to portray this message well.

"Guitar Hero" can be described as the new finger-tapping, whammy bar-pressing, guitar-tossing, video game that allows regular individuals to feel like rock stars in their own living rooms. The concept of this video game has been adopted by a band called "The Guitar Zeros" who creatively transformed these plastic guitars into actual music playing ones. They were able to achieve this by writing software that allows them to create thousands of sounds with the Guitar Hero instruments. They have been rocking out with these souped up plastic guitars by playing songs from the actual video game. Their creativity, resourcefulness has truly captured and inspired many indivuals, such as myself. Essentially, many people, including myself believe that "Guitar Hero" would ultimately discourage people from learning actual instruments. However, this videopodcast has changed my perspective.

The videopodcast began with an interview of a girl who introduces the band, Guitar Zeros. After the introduction, a brief but detailed presentation of how the plastic guitars were transformed was shown. Here, it was suggested that these new guitars could potentially be "an alternative way" to play the guitar. The guitar has 32 possible combinations and can be plugged into other devices such as an amplifier etc. This segment promotes and alternative way of learning the guitar. The next segment are various clips of the creators commenting on what, how and why they created the guitar. One of the comments made was "we're just really harnessing the raw energy of rock, the best we can". This comment showed a lot of passion and dedication put into both playing and creating music. Towards the end, were clips of the band performing and fans acknowledging their talents. In this segment, fans were going up on stage and congratulating the members of Guitar Zero. This is moving because it shows that these avid musicians were able to reach out and help others appreciate music in a completely different level.

Overall, the organization of this videopodcast was excellent. The images, sounds and the interviews were all neccesary and relevant in getting the message across. The information provided was sufficient. The sound quality was clear however the image quality was mediocre and could be improved. Despite these minor areas that require improvement, the content and the story was depicted well and the message was effectively conveyed.

Week 3: Web 2.0 and Podcasting where is this heading?

In our forever changing society, the only thing that remains constant is change. Technology is constantly changing and there is always a need for improvement and advancement. The rise of the internet has dramatically changed our society in terms of jobs, lifestyle, and most importantly, communication. A current trend that is changing with regards to the internet is the rising of second generation web based communities, also known as web 2.0 or the Semantic Web. Tim O'Reilly is the founder of Web 2.0. He proposes that it is designed to facilitate and enrich a users experience and engagement in the world wide web. These Web 2.0 applications, particularly wikis, blogs and podcasts, have been increasingly adopted by many users because of their ease of use and rapidity of deployment and they offer the opportunity for powerful information sharing and ease of collaboration. The future of Web 2.0 and podcasting seems to be one with many innovations and will be tremendously furthered and Tim O'reilly has carefully outlined some of the potential changes (O'Reilly 2005) from web 1.0 that are changing.

"Web 2.0 is participative" (Miller 2005). Web 1.0 has tended to be somewhat one-sided, with a flow of content from provider to viewer. Currently, those who use the internet had actively participated online, by blogging, sharing files, or equivalent (Lenhart et al 2004). That percentage will rise, and participation will become a part of our online lives as individuals share reviews of books, comment on the local Chinese restaurant, engage with our governments, or even given give each other diet recipes and advices! "Web 2.0 applications have been quick to spot the value of user-generated content" (Miller 2005). It heavily stresses out the importance of active user engagement. It takes importance of the output of the user and making this available for everyone else.

“Literally millions of people now participate in the sharing and exchange of these forms of media by producing their own podcasts, videos and photos” (Anderson 10). People are able to be creative and create their own content and also share the knowledge that they have with the public. With the steady rising of Web 2.0, it isn’t surprising that bloggers will eventually switch to video podcasting as replacement for blogging. With exposure to both visual and auditory stimuli, users will be more active and engaged. It is more engaging in a sense that sometimes through blogging or chatting, we don’t catch certain emotions that the blogger writes, with podcasting, we can see facial expressions, voice intonations and emotions. Web 2.0 focuses specifically on communication and facilitating community.

Further more, another advantage of Web 2.0 and podcasting is ease of access and sharing of information. Research and education facilities, news agencies and even those in the medical field have adopted podcasting as a valid form of communication. Wikis, blogs and podcasts are all relatively easy to use, which partly accounts for their proliferation.The fact that there are many free and Open Source versions of these tools may also be responsible for their explosive growth. Thus it would be relatively easy to implement. Paradoxically, some of their disadvantages also relate to their openness and ease of use. With virtually anybody able to alter, edit or otherwise contribute to the collaborative Web pages, it can be problematic to gauge the reliability and accuracy of such resources.

One advantage of web 2.0 that comes in handy for me as a student is the use of discussion forums such as blackboard, ccnet, and wikispaces. These onlide educational discussion forums have helped many students with clarifying information with professors, accesing lecture notes, and even stirring up questions about what was learned in class. It is facilitating the notion of "active engagement" as specified by web 2.0. A future example of conducting lectures could be through webcam, where students are at home, on their computers attending lectures at home through the webcam. Through this method of conducting lectures, there is still some sort of engagement involved. Students can still ask questions and participate. Parallel to this, some companies have already adopted this type of technology: www.gotomymeeting.com is an example of this. GoToMyMeeting is a way to attend meetings or conferences without being physically there. It specializes in web conferencing, online meetings, web conferencing services.

Overall, although Web 2.0 has it's shortcomings, the benefits seem to outweigh the negatives as this media is increasing quickly. Because it is still evolving, constant change will occur to improve it. The future of Web 2.0 will be one of innovative technologies, perhaps even developing a Web 3.0 or other forms of social networking on a higher level. Perhaps creating the quality of podcasting better, making even interaction even more real. There seem to be no limits to technology is that Web 2.0 interactivity can be seen and used by just about any one. The production value can be fairly low. The amount of technology, widgets, etc. can be fairly low. You can create an interactive web site just by inspiring your site visitors and interacting with them.

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Sources:

Anderson, Paul. What is Web 2.0?.
JISC Technology and Standards Watch. Feb 2007.
<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf> accessed on 29 Jan. 2008.

Lenhart, A., Horrigan, J., & Fallows, D. Content Creation Online, Pew Internet & American Life Project research report. February 2004
<http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Content_Creation_Report.pdf> accessed on 29 Jan. 2008.

Miller, Paul. "Web 2.0: Building the New Library." Aradianne 45 (2005). <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/miller/> accessed on 29 Jan. 2008.

O'Reilly, Tim. "What is Web 2.0." (2005).
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html> accessed on 29 Jan. 2008.

Week 3: Videopodcast

Week 2: Seeking the best of…

PerezHilton.com is rude, shameless and undeniably entertaining! With the tagline "Hollywood's Most-Hated Website," and a regular feature titled "If you are easily offended, then do not CLICK HERE!", perezhilton.com keeps his readers coming back for more.

Mario Lavandeira, the creator of perezhilton (aka "Perez,P-nasty") offers a steady stream of celebrity gossip in a unique form and interactive enough to prevent his celebrity-blog from wearing out. He includes embarrassing celebrity photos accompanied with a fill-in the blank that invites readers to try their hands at his particular brand of cattiness, a “Guess the Celebretard” column that features celebrity quotes, often ridiculously self-centered or ignorant, and lets readers guess before clicking the link to find out if they're right, and a host of music and video clips that Perez deems worth of his site. He confidently mocks celebrities by creating collages, nicknames such as “Britney the unFITney” suggesting her as being an unfit mother and creating several other terms for certain “body parts” to add humour. Through his fame, he was able to start selling shirts to promote his website. He has become a trendsetter.

What is so applealing about Perez is his ability to carelessly discuss celebrity rumors that would be otherwise too risky for the pages of People or Star magazine. The beauty of this is that it's a blog, and therefore no one edits out anything others would find insulting or offensive. The only thing Perez has to worry about is maintaining his image, and watching it grow. However, his fame raises an important question: why did he get so famous? Nowadays, the term “being famous” does not necessarily have to be tied with a special talent or ability. For example, Paris Hilton has no talent whatsoever, yet she’s managed to make a name for herself. She’s become an icon and has even managed to get her own reality show (“The Surreal Life”). Perezhilton on the other hand, became popular because of his wit and catchy name “Perezhilton” kind of parallel to the whole notion of Paris Hilton being famous for no reason. Usually, people who are famous have done something remarkable, something that has made a difference or a change in the world. Perez is however, the opposite. He has done nothing to contribute, and is practically famous for making fun of others. He is the ultimate bully of blogosphere! So my question is, in the 21st century, when we have people like Perez, becoming famous for celebrity-bullying and Paris becoming famous for nothing, how do we define the term “famous”? Who is famous and what kind of characteristics must they possess?

Clearly, perezhilton has shown that you do not need to be anything in order to be something! You must have to simply be yourself, despite what others might think. Kind of like that famous and very clichéd quote “Be Who You Are and Say What You Feel Because Those Who Mind Don't Matter and Those Who Matter Don't Mind.” We can all agree that some of the things on his blog are deemed too innapropriate, but at the same time we can't help but read because it is just so undeniably entertaining!

Week 1: What is the biggest issue facing blogging, citizenship and the future of media?

Blogging is a means of self-expression. It is a way for people to freely voice out their opinions, without feeling threatened by some high order authority. A blog entry usually consists of a title, headline, body, post date, comments, tags, and more. You can create a blog on whatever topic you like, use the template you want, and write in it when you want. Nearly all blogging sites offer registration for free and are accessible to all. This idea of a world where there are no boundaries motivates and gives people confidence to share their innermost views about absolutely anything! You can vent to the world, write about things that you care about, discuss your life, there is no limitation. However, lack of regulation or control could pose a potential problem for the readers. Issues surrounding credibility and accuracy of information are questionable. For example, if someone were to write “the suicide rate in Japan has risen from 45% to 75%” without sourcing anything, I would not consider this information credible. They are not credible in a sense that they do not have solid data to back up their information. Now, if the author is however a journalist or a person in the fields of research, it is easy to assume that their information is accurate because of their credibility as a person. There is ambiguity between credible factual information and credibility of the actual person and opinions or beliefs stated by people in general.

Furthermore, blogging removes boundaries for both time and space. Blogging breaks geographical boundaries. Blogs can be accessed by anyone around the world. However, many question the extent of the freedom users have within their blog. Is it really a limitless world? Those living in communist countries like China, people may be less inclined to blog freely because of fear from government. The goverment censors and filters information provided and there is an unequal flow of information between other counties and China. Therefore, technological change or emergence of other devices for self-expression does not neccesarily come with equal growth in freedom of expression for all.