Internet Activity #4

Hello readers, this will be the final blog post for the year. I will try and transform this blog when it is no longer useful for school. But until then, time to look at one of my favorite new technologies, podcasts and vidcasts!

Interestingly enough, podcasts and vidcasts are the same thing, only vidcasts is more specific and only really refers to video podcasts. Both of these things were started by Apple to boost iPod sales by offering online, downloadable content to make the newer generation of iPods much more appealing as a more universal device. The result was the ever expanding online video world with special mention of Youtube. Here are some audio podcasts I found appealing:

Drew Garabo on podcastalley

Excerpt:

Orlando radio Bad Boy Drew Garabo takes his show to the internet. Always funny, always raw, always edgy, this is Podcasting worth listening to.

Sex is Fun on podcastalley

Excerpt:

Dedicated to the rational discussion of human sexuality from the apporoach of fun, enjoyment and pleasure. Each episode features a different topic that will discuss how to maximize sexual enjoyment while avoiding all the dangers of sex. Sex is Fun features human sexuality guru Kidder Kaper, and the sound engineer, Coochie.

I enjoyed listening to podcasts, they are very intuitive and have that "gritty" feel that most mainstream media lacks. Podcasts also give the everyman a voice, which I cannot argue against. Podcasting is not, however, as good as blogging as audio lacks the nuances of the written word. However, audio is sometimes more captivating than reading something on an HTML page for information, and can also be more dramatic if need be. The exception to this is of course audiobooks, which are excellent if one feels to strained reading the written word and would rather relax to a soothing voice with their favorite story or book.

Video Podcasts, the next step:

I watched an episode of Air Out my Shorts with Preston Buttons and the "Word Whore" and found it enjoyable if only for the utter mindlessness of it. The concept is essentially a baiting and bashing cycle of viewers and the host and seems to be an attention grabbing show, nothing more.

Then I watched the G4 Tech TV AotS Video Podcast and found it utterly enthralling. Kevin Pereira was at the top of his game at a debate with the legendary Adam Sessler over the "game of the year" title that G4's XPlay (which Sessler hosts) gives out yearly. Unfortunately even at the top of his game AotS host Kevin Pereira lost horribly in the debate over the true game of the year.



This video is an extremely viral one of President George W. Bush (jr.) having a shoe thrown at him by an unnamed Arab. Youtube is successful mainly because of its ease of access, catchy name and media hype.

Internet Activity #3

Hello readers from the net, this is the Guardian of Fate and this is a post in respect to the Computer and Information Science course at Trent (COIS 1010). Some of you might be wondering where #s 1 and 2 may be, sadly viewers, this blogger has unfortunately failed to keep up and is now trying to make ends meat for marks. So here goes.

The topic for the Internet Activity # 3 is this: "tagging" and "mashups" - tagging is quite self-explanatory, and is used for most blogging and forum systems as a way to manipulate or change text, photos and video that is therein contained. For example, when I create something simple like blue text, the actual tagging is expressed in the HTML code like this: < style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">< style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, < /span >< /span >, . The information found within the brackets are the tags, and they allow information to be changed enough for a user to visually notice it, such as blue text, or a different text size. Images can also be edited using tags, making them larger, or smaller. Tagging is as old as programming itself, and is extremely useful when it comes to blogging and forum posting when someone wants to change to make an aesthetic impact or emotional.

Mashing now is something entirely different. Mashups are essentially when a user takes media or information from a field of different things, such as different venues, locales, etc. and "mashes" them into one place. A good example is Google Maps, which utilizes various information, such as information found on maps, and also street information. Some active monitoring is used to locate certain areas. Another mashup is Flickr, which is the most common photographic imaging site on the internet. Each photo is attached to a basic description and title, and a keyword search will reveal to the user any and all photos with the attributed information.

As far as cutting edge technology goes, both tagging and mashups are nothing inventive, but they score big time of innovativeness, as the technology in both was created for completely different applications but yet is still perfect for both tagging and mashups. The technology is still new, but this blogger thinks that it will be a booming and integral piece of the internet as the technology improves.

The Advance of the Common Voice: The Effect of Blogging on the World and Future

Before there were the media moguls. Fat cats dressed in suits portraying themselves as humans as the rest of the world for better or for worse lapped up happily what their various editors and journalists had to say. This, from the perspective of the moguls, would have been the end and the only cornerstone to the information selling market. The newspaper was first, but then came radios, which these men and women easily bought up and insured that only their information would be told. The television came, but mainly as a tool already in the hands of the now-multimillionaire information merchants in the world. Thus its effects were few and far between, *mostly* toting the line that the moguls wanted toted. However, the 1970s harkoned an age of innovation where an obscure but unprecedented technology had been born, with the potential to outdo all other media in terms of information dissemination. This technology would one day be called "the internet".

The moguls at first did not understand the internet's nuances and thus did not consider it a threat to their monopolized trade. This however could be considered their great mistake of the century in time when they had been thus far incorrigible. The internet has made its stake in the information market, effortlessly, and has since become the largest bane to the modern world today. Where in the past devastating secrets were locked away hidden in obscure places, it now takes under an hour to type it out and scan the damning evidence onto the internet into blogs, forums and journals. Creating an all-to-real fait accompli that the suit wearing moguls would have been wise to foresee. They have struck back with large, expensive media websites, like CNN or BBC, but compared to the Common Voice, they are whispers in a sea of raging storms.

Some blogs that have been encountered, give useful information on details the mainstream media suspiciously forgets. Others are very common, and give updates on certain media tidbits (current memes are Obama, Iran and Israel), and others are more technical and to do with the real world, such as motor blogs, blogs on sports and others.

Another useful blogging tool is called "Twitter" - a useful "mini-blog" that many people have found to be a use, and many others have found it to be useless. The main issues the author has with Twitter is its giving out personal user information to third parties to fund its growing base. Also, like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter is plagued by too much user information being available to others, giving vice to cyber-stalking and the likes. However, Twitter has been found extremely useful for some businesses, as it is so popular and thus used as a means to advertise. Also, the ability for users to put Twitter on their cellular phones has greatly multiplied its usage and assured its place for many years to come.

Given Twitter's issues and selling of user information, the author would probably rate it below common and mainstream blogging.

~The Guardian