“YOUTUBE” EXPERIENCE – WEEK 5

The YouTube (YT) experience was certainly something different. I normally had not frequented the YT sites until this week. A brief analysis of YT can describe it as another new example of means of production of a form of mass media in enabling the public to create their own video productions. It is well worth your while to take a look at a video done by Chris Anderson on the “Long Tail”. It is a form of promotion of a book he wrote buy the same name but I forgive him completely because the concept of the “Long Tail” is one I first heard mentioned to me by Jo Kay at Wollongong TAFE a couple of years ago. I will not explain the long tail concept here, better that you have a look at it yourself. I have done a small introduction for Anderson’s video and put it on YT which was a part of my class assignment.
For myself, I have discovered that YT could be useful in future sociological research as well as my new media studies.
At this point in time I am opining that YT will be used as another vehicle for advertising. One example is the popcorn being “popped’ by mobile phones. I will not give the advertisers credence here by mentioning any about it.
YouTube is an extremely popular concept and getting exponentially larger. I have not spent much time reflecting on the ultimate cultural function YT will perform in society and if it has any peculiar social effects. Time will tell as my epistemology develops.
You might also like to have a look at Chris Anderson’s blog.

THANKS TO "MACCA"

I just have to blog this. So my DIGC 101 assignment suffers a bit . Tuff!

PICS OF THE RECENT PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE

As is often occurring these days, I was woken at 5.30 am this morning by pain in my left foot, a result of getting older, I suppose. Knowing there was no more sleep happening for a while I tuned my bedside radio to Macca's ABC Australia All Over radio program.

A truck driver that had just returned from driving road trains in the Pilbara (driving with 110,000 litres of petrol up you backside) rang in to say that he was near Parkes, it was bloody cold but something interesting was happening. The moon was disappearing. He described it as the moon setting over the western horizon with the top half chopped off. Macca said he knew nothing about but would ring an astrologer mate to find out.

Wondering if it was the same here I grabbed my digital camera and went out the back. I live on top of a hill looking over Port Kembla Harbour and doubted if I would see the moon as the escarpment to the west makes planetary objects "set" a lot earlier than elsewhere.

The truckie from the Pilbara was right, it was cold AND there was something funny with the moon. I was fortunate enough to get some pics of the partial eclipse of the moon (unlike Bonnie Tyler who got a total eclipse of the heart). Unfortunately, my batteries went flat - a cardinal sin as far as I am concerned - and I only managed to get five pics.

I have posted a part of one of them on here. Do you think I will let you get away with seeing the pic and then just disappearing? NO!! I want to use an internet marketing tool to keep your attention; to make you spend a little more of your valuable time in "my cyberspace". I will post only part of the pic with the "important bit" missing. You will have to click on to a link to go to my flickr site to see the "important" bit and then perhaps be moved to comment or even look at some more of my pics , gaining me increased status in cyberspace.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

By the way, for any students wishing to learn a little more of Australian culture, tune in to ABC radio, 97.3 FM from 5.30 on a Sunday morning and have a listen to Macca, he's a true blue Aussie and a cobber to every Australian. Pity I'm such a bastard for not giving you a fair suck of the sav by fart-arsing around.

P.S.
For the physicists - The sun is coming up behind me when I took these pics. How come the shadow of the earth is on the top half of the moon? Shouldn't the shadow be on the bottom? I promise you the pics have not been retouched.

MySpace EXPERIENCE -WEEK 3

I must in all honesty refer to my MySpace experience as not a very pleasant one. I have created a MySpace page previously (pre Facebook) so that I can keep in touch with what my then 16 year old and his friends were up to. The targetted age group of MySpace users was very clearly pointed out to me then when I was told in no uncertain terms that I am too old for MySpace and to “get off MySpace”. I quite enjoyed the experience of creating my first MySpace using one of the on line coding software programs and found it much easier then than I did this time around. The fact that I had a lot of trouble putting a background picture up for my new MySpace did nothing for my liking of this type of P2p communication. The format is not in line with my preferred set up because of exactly that; the format. I understand that you can pimp your MySpace in many different ways which can very quickly lead to lots of clutter as well as becoming cumbersome in that the page takes a long time to load. The pre-arranged formats that are available did not suit my style of what I consider a decent vehicle for my type of online presence. Perhaps I was bored with the concept of MySpace due to having played around with it previously which clouded my vision. I appreciate it is useful for teenagers to communicate their on-line presence although a quick survey of my now 19 year old son and his friends found that there is only one fronm about a dozen or so of his friends that have kept their MySpace up to date. Most of them now communicate through IM such as MSn and could not be bothered fiddling around creating a MySpace presence. Conclusion – MySpace is not for me, the target audience does not suit, the expectations in the format are not my preferred style and if I did create a MySpace page it would look very much out of place in the genre.

PERSONAL WEBIFICATION - WEEK 4

THE TIME FACTOR

Webification; a new term introduced to me recently. Connoted by me as the representation of myself on the internet. I am allowing myself to use the MySpace area as a place where I allow myself the freedom to put over some of my personal viewpoints. I am finding the subject matter very time consuming and at times frustrating. It is a wonderful thing to be able to create your own public “private” space, one in which you feel you have full control over production as well as the power of being your own censor, deciding the fate of other people’s comments/contributions.

A rare glimpse inside the Webification Room at UOW.
Where time and space are compressed,
alter egos are manufactured
and the cybergrail of perfect interactivication is sought

As my projects develop, I hope to explore the limitations that are imposed on users of the various “technologies” such as Facebook v MySpace v Blogger, all three of which I am familiar with and exemplify a manageable cross section.

My comment for this week involves time management. I have been busy setting up brand new blogs, Facebook and a MySpace profiles as well as trying to contribute to class discussions for the two core 100 DIGC subjects. Personal experience so far has illustrated to me how much time is involved in achieving any semblance of worthwhile production. I would ask that you reflect on the time taken in the modern era to create this on line presence and compare it with historical forms of communication such as letter writing, or say, an opinion piece such as a letter to the Editor.

Modern technology says NO to just getting on the keyboard and typing out your piece, then posting it off to wherever. (Yes, I know about e-mail, but I will argue that commodification and cultural developments of the technological age demands more, a powerful product to which we are culturally bound and therefore encouraged to participate in.)

A price is paid for the agency to reach a far larger audience. The communication needs to be formatted in a certain way, whether it be on Facebook, a blog or whatever. I will arguer that one item high on the price list is time. I have found that I have spent much, much more of my time setting up an artificial cyberspace that is visually pleasing to me (with my intended audience factored in) than actually creating text or communication in the knowledge sharing sense.

I will also argue that the time factor will continue to play a large part in my future efforts in developing the three elements of communication (FB, MyS, and blogs). I would hazard a guess that each contribution I make would take at least three times as long as if I simply thought about what I was going to write and then wrote it down on paper and posted it as a jpeg on a white background on a web page.

There is a price we pay for the 24/7 divergent, convergent availability of modern communication.

Food I will leave for thought is the possible development of the disappearing private communication in relation to the emergence of public communication.

THE BASIC PURPOSE

The basic function of this blog at "this point in time" is for an assessment.

To this purpose I will be chronicling the progress and attempt to gradually critically analyse my own work. It is important that I address the basic criteria before I commence to diverge on my blog journey.

The first assessment is due on August 15 so I have a little less than 2 weeks to get something presentable. The next and final one is on October 17 giving me 2 short months to polish it.

My own interpretations of what is required and how I go about it will be explained briefly. My thoughts and ideas for improvements will also be logged.So here we go. It is suggested that this can be used as a self-promotional tool for "showing my wares" so to speak.

My choice of template is to try to create an academic feel. The cream page looks a little like parchment, highlighted by the darker brown surrounding it. I am not happy with the width of the page so I will shortly be widening the cream “box”. The two colours set each other off well even though brown is not my favourite colour.

The links are on the left for a reason. When on the right I consider them to be a kind of afterthought. People read from left to right so they will automatically scan the links as they read the post, more so than if they were on the right margin.

I have entered a post of acknowledements to recognize and thank those people whose creative abilities I have “borrowed”. I have also left my original posts on here for reasons beyond me. Maybe because I really like the photo I took of my son surfing – taken the very first day I purchased my Canon Powershot camera. Money well spent!

I now need to commence the serious business of improving my blog. There are many, many things I need to add to this blog so I will start with a few self suggestions.

I believe that a successful page needs lots of white space (in this case cream) so I will try not to clutter things up too much. Other things on the list are to widen the text page; set out the links correctly and very importantly, set ALL of the hyperlinks up so that they open up in a new tab in the browser. I need to experiment with the text a little also.

That’s enough for this post. It doesn’t get done by talking about it. Let the development begin!!! Oh, and lots of pics required also.