Entry 3 Reading: From a new media perspective and from a marketing, public relations, and advertising perspective, “American Idol” is fascinating. What makes “American Idol” different from other reality TV shoes is that the ideas from multiple genres are combined. For instance gaming shows have existed for decades and have been popular, contest shows such as “Survivor” and the “Amazing Race” have been successful, and “American Idol” brings these elements together, as well as bring in audience participation. Although I have only watched a few episodes of “American Idol”, I was at a family gathering, I have heard people talk about the show, so I know approximately the format. What is interesting to me is not the show but rather the process and how it engages people. The voter participation helps people feel like they are part of the process, watching the bad people sing makes people feel good about themselves, and then gossiping and debating about who is going to win gives people something to talk about and a reason to watch the show. If any of these elements were missing “American Idol” probably would not be as popular. I also find it interesting that FOX was able to give each audience member something, for instance the singers are young for the teenage audience, and then there are older judges, and celebrities like Elton John for the older generation. What is very interesting to me though is how angering people got when they found out that FOX had mostly decided who was going to win before the show aired. Clearly, the voting was a big part of the show, even though FOX had plenty of avenues to control the votes. Moving onto “The New Media Language. I was interested by the idea that computer user interface and human computer interface use metaphors from ancient history, such as a scroll. Although I am not convinced that the developers consciously choose to model webpages after scrolls, a more probable explanation is that scrolling was the logical for viewing large amounts of texts. I also thought it was interesting to think of a screen as like a prison. I never thought of viewing a movie as being imprisoned but after reading “The New Media Language” I can see this explanation. Equally fascinating is the idea that photography and cinema are impressing the past. Then of course with virtual worlds the roles are reversed because now the person in the real world is being imprisoned instead of the media. This maybe a reason why virtual reality has not taken off with consumers. Although virtual reality offers unique possibilities people do not like the idea of having to transport themselves to an alternative reality. They instead like to be able to be in both worlds at the same time. Clearly, the computer interface did not spring out of nowhere. The idea that forms of cinema, the printed word, and human computer interface came together does not surprise me. I am not sure that I understand how computer windows are a page metaphor. For me there is little similarity between flipping or schooling through pages and reading a book. Again, Apple most likely just figured out that organizing information into windows was useful for the user. For me seeing how cinema influenced computers makes is much clearer, especially for gaming. Recently video games have used elements from movies such as different angles and shots to make it easy for characters to move around. This is also present in virtual worlds such as Second Life. Second Life: While I like some elements of Second Life I found the overall game to be boring. There were not enough people to interact with and the fact that you have to spend real money to buy items was discouraging. I enjoyed seeing the building that other people had created, though I still feel that seeing architecture in real life is more impressive. Although Second Life has some interesting opportunities to explore I just do not feel people want to invest that much time in a virtual world. Why would you go to a virtual bar, when there are plenty of real world bars, especially when you cannot even get drunk? The fact that you do not need to worry about the survival of your avatar also makes the game seam less realistic. In the SIMS for instance your characters have urges that have to be satisfied, for example they get hunger, have to go to the bathroom, and they can fall in love. Since this is part of real life and it is not translated to Second Life the game feels artificial and so you wonder why you are playing it. Also, I feel we already spend enough time in virtual reality on website such as facebook and twitter. Company names: Intersecting Media Fourroadsmedia

Entry 2

Most of us take for granite that most of the media we have today did not exist before the late 1890’s. I was fascinated how the first computers where developed simultaneously for mathematics and art. Before reading about the evolution of media In Language of New Media I did not give much thought to the fact that my laptop has a screen, keyboard, mouse, and buttons, that allow me to visual interact and manipulate the interface. Although the New Media reading was interesting, the material was quite dense and in some cases it was hard to follow, not because it was confusing but because the mass amount of information was overwhelming, sometimes. I found Converging Culture to be a much easier read. Maybe that is because I am more familiar and comfortable with reality TV, or maybe the format felt less academic and more like a consumer book. Regardless, the idea of collective knowledge is interesting to me and I agree that in an internet era we are moving toward that direction. For instance thanks to social networking I have instant access to hundreds of people that I can easily tap for information. If I am working on a project and I need to know something technical about computers, I have a friend for that, or I want to know whether a restaurant is good I can Yelp it. I also thought how the chat boards all had some knowledge that everyone knew, yet had elite groups that worked on different projects and published their finding to everyone was interesting. Even though I have only watched Survivor for classes, I still thought the author made a good choice about using this as an example because everyone knows what Survivor is even if they do not follow each episode. Just as the competitors on survive join social groups, this week I joined Linkedin. This is a business social network. You have options to fill out information about previous jobs you have had, include when you worked there and your position. You can use the website to read peoples professional profiles and also join professional groups, for instance Ford Motor company, that by the way is integrating lots of interesting new media into their models. Talking about new media I downloaded another game onto my iPhone. This was in incredibly simple where you literally are told not to push a red button. So, if you follow the instruction then you just stare at a box and ignore the temptation to push the button. If you push the button then a story line ensues, yet the story line never changes, so the game gets boring quite quickly. That is the point I believe because you can buy additional stories for $1. I still think that making the stories boring so you will buy more is a bad business model. Another app I downloaded is called Loopt and I thought this would be interesting because I remembered it being demoed at Macworld 2008. The app itself is cool, essential it uses the GPS software in the phone to figure out your current location and if you have friends on Loopt, you can see them if they share their location. The idea is you could be sipping coffee at Starbucks, and then realize your friend Jill is just three blocks away and so you could text her and hang out. The problem is that I have only one friend who has the app, so it is rather pointless. For new media apps this week, I downloaded an app from Logitech that is suppose to let my iPhone turn into a trackpad. This was my dud app because I could not get it to work. Even looking at the troubleshooting guide was not of much help. Fortunately the NBC app was much better. This app lets me follow the Olympics, including who has won the most medals, which and that is one of the first elements you see. That is great because that is what I care about most. I also like how I can watch video highlight that I might have missed, and read the athletes twitter updates, if I feel like it. It would be nice if the stories could be organized by event or athlete, so in some ways the user interface could benefit with allowing for customization. Actually there are categories, but you have to touch the screen three times just to get to them, which is annoying. So, not a perfect app, but most the the videos I want to watch are featured on the home screen, so it works for me.

Entry 1

I have been using WebCT for 2.5 years and the software is OK. I wouldn't say that the user interface is great but for the most part it is easy to use. I like the navigation, for instance the tabs are useful, and it is nice that you can communicate with your teacher. I do wish that there was support for connecting with facebook. Also, it is annoying that there is no print friendly option. Talking about social networking I messed around with twitter. I still don't understand why I'd want to post every update about my life but I could see how twitter could be useful to keep people up to date about a company. For instance you could tweet new product launches, news updates, and link to notable stories online. For my game I downloaded something called down hill bowling. The game takes a twist on knocking down pins by adding a course that you have to navigate. You tilt the iTouch or iPhone to steer and you can choose either timed mode or points. If you choose time mode you have to knock down at least one pin from every set, otherwise you fail. You can also get items such as bombs and hover. I found an app for mac called Plex, that basically turns your Mac into a media connected center. You can tap into iTunes, iPhoto, access hundred of internet channels, and tap into the file structure on your mac, so you can choose how to organize your media. Also it taps internet database sites so you can get info about the content. The major problem with this is that you have to do more work. It's nice to be able to be in control of your file structure but this also takes work and Front Row already comes on your Mac and if you already use iTunes to organize your media then you don't need to create a new file structure. I think this app caters to a niche that doesn't like Apple deciding for them how to organize their media, but I think Apple does a good job, so this App creates more complication then I like. But it's still pretty good if you don't like Front Row. I downloaded another app for the iPhone that is similar to Tetris but is not quite the same. For instance there is no falling blocks and no leveling up. That last part makes the game get boring, since the only challenge is to complete the same level in fewer moves. The game is called flood because the object is to flood the floor with the same color blocks. I would say this game is a dead because it is too simple and get boring rather quickly.