Twitter is the Medium of Movement

I have never liked twitter. I don't like using it now and I don't think I'll ever like using it unless I have to for a job. I will admit twitter is interesting but what i did not know is that its now the "medium of the moment." What's more interesting is that the iranians use it to protest the presidential election.

Twitter is built to spread information fast. Isn't Facebook like that? Twitter is very personal, but Facebook is even more personal. One thing that is different is that Tweets go out over two networks, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen. I do agree with the TIME article when it states, that Twitter is ideal for a mass protest...and its very hard for any central authority to control. With Facebook you can just close down a specific page.. Twitter. You definitely can't do that.

Engineering and Jouralism Degree Combined

I really liked this article on Columbia University's new science degree that they have. It was interesting to read that nowadays to be a journalist you can't just have basic knowledge and facts. I never would have thought that an engineering degree would be worth having when working in the field of journalism, but it does make sense with all the up and coming technology. The demand to edit web sites and journal article is increasing and I hope more colleges will start putting a journalism/engineering degree into place and follow Columbia's footsteps.

World of Warcraft

Lee Sherlocks article on interactivity through World of Warcraft was very interesting. I really liked this article because a lot of warcraft games have the capability for gamers to talk to each other through handsets and internet about the game while they are playing. This is another new technology that has recently come out in the past couple of years.

Call of Duty is one warcraft game that I'm particularly familiar with. My brother constantly plays it but I have no interest in it other than the fact that he talks to people while playing against them. I never really thought that games like this would really make a difference within interactivity, but its interesting to see how they change people.

Future of Reading in a Digital World

Clive Thompson's article on the Future of Reading in a Digital World was very interesting. I'm an avid reader. It's hard to read books during the semester but on my breaks and especially the Summer I read constantly. It's a stress reliever and I don't know where I would be without my books.

To be honest I have a really big fear for authors and their books. I don't want books to be easily accessible online. I love being able to pick up a hard copy and read it. I know there are the nooks and e-readers now where you can read online, but I'm not sure how I feel about readers being able to write and comment whatever they want about a book and a specific sentence or chapter.

Thompson is correct when he says that if we take books digital it will unlock the real hidden value which is the readers. I know books will eventually turn digital because our world is all about technology, its just a mater of when.

Playing with poetry

Jennifer deWinter's talk about poetry and gaming was very interesting. From listening to deWinter my understanding is that poetry is language based art and poetry is art. All forms of writing and creative is to an extent a form of art. Before coming to listen to deWinter speak, I had never heard of poetic video games. I've heard of poetry being made into music, but never into games. deWinter talked about how the experience of poetry moves people and that games can't be read as text. I agree that games cannot be read as text but when poetry is involved in the game, you are reading through it. I guess I can't really judge until I actually sit through and play a poetry game. All in all I really liked deWinter's talk. The two poetry games that she showed us seemed creepy and depressing so if I do sit down to play a game like that, I will definitely find something a little more upbeat.

Stevie/Emily

Stevie,

I think this is a good start but I'm confused as to where you're going with it. I like how you went and started talking about Perez Hilton but I thought he was just a blogger who talked about famous people? I'm really interested to hear about the 3 cases he was involved in especially the ESPN Films. I also don't know much about him and copyright infringement so I'm really interested to hear where you're going with that.


Emily,

This paper is awesome, especially the beginning when you start with the quote. When I first learned about the word "meme" it was in class a couple of months ago. I really like that you wrote your whole paper on one meme. Your paper really helped me understand more about memes. The only suggestion/comment I have is that I feel like a research paper shouldn't use a lot of "I" and "my." I may be wrong so Dr. Hunter is obviously the person to talk to but I think when we do big papers like this it should be in third person. Other than that this paper is really good.

Facebook

I know I won't be in class tomorrow to discuss these the Facebook Manual but here are my concerns,


There is a lot of extra space on some pages. I definitely think that can be changed. We want to be thorough with our directions but we don't want it to be too lengthy.
On the "Profile Information" page there is a lot of bullets. I don't mind that but capitalizing needs to be consistent...
I do have to say that I love the "Brian Lomb" profile picture...
I'm also not sure how we would add John Au's information into the manual. I think we need to add it but I think it is going to be very difficult to switch everything around.