versatile

I am in the process of putting together the second Xtranormal piece, since the first one was already done for the mid-term presentation. However since I already know what the dialogue on both pieces entail, I have already started working on the actual paper.

Spring break is usually a great time to travel, and visit different places, since the weather is nice for the most part. Normally when this time of year comes around as it does each year, people like to do something different. However with heavy work schedules, and papers due the same day I get back to school, planning any sort of getaway with friends just was not possible this year. Staying home to write papers, and prepare for the new media presentation saved me a lot of money on a trip to Mexico or the Caribbean.

My group new media presentation is on web 2.0 and peer production, and as part of this project, we have decided to create something animated to demonstrate how web 2.0 is revolutionizing  peer production, and the way individuals collaborate. Hence most of my time was spent looking at different websites or programs that allowed that kind of user participation. Finally as a group we decided to use Xtranormal, which is really cool for creating those kinds of content. I spent a lot of time playing with the site and using the tools available to select, and make characters come alive. If you can type, you can basically create a movie using this program, and it is a great way to teach children the art of film making, since it involves composing a variety of camera angles, and breaking a story up into smaller more interesting segments.

Many businesses are now using xtranormal for advertising purposes. Basic access is free, however subscription gets complete unlimited use of all asset options, and services. Maybe you guys should check it out sometime.

In this highly competitive environment, business owners and web publishers, need to be creative and innovative inorder to survive. Facebook, Google, and YouTube, are typical examples of major web giants that have lead the way in those areas. Access to Facebook is free, and the tons of invaluable content available on Google, and YouTube are also free, however these companies are among the richest and most successful. It is reasonably safe to argue that companies have to meet operating cost, and overheads, but directly charging for information online may not be the most imaginative way to amass financial wealth.

Unless there is a collaborative effort among newspaper editorials, and writers, to set up paywalls, the idea may be one resulting in more harm than good. With the oceans of information available on the World Wide Web, it is relatively easy for readers to switch to sources that offer the service for free. Because of the way the internet culture is structured, people will resist anything with a fee attached to it.

According to MacArthur, “writing is work, writing has value, and writers should be paid”. I totally agree, but I would like to say to MacArthur that if your motive for writing is a financial one, then, you should think outside of the box, and look at the bigger picture, because publishing your work online for free, might be the best way to go.

“The everyday folks can now take control of the production of media content, and are no longer merely consumers heholden to professionals media people”. Evidently Rosen is very perceptive, and on point with this assertion, and so is Clay Shirky as he repeatedly echoes the same sentiment is his book” Cognitive Surplus”. According to Shirky, digital media allows the people formerly known as the audience, to create value for one another. This is basically stating that people are now learning to use the free time afforded to them, for more creative acts, rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of web 2.0, and online tools that allow new forms of collaborations.

In chapter two of his book “Cognitive Surplus” Shirky uses a very good example. “The button marked publish”. Maxine Hong Kingston wrote an article praising Barack Obama on the occasion of his visit to her home state of Hawaii, but unfortunately for her, the newspapers she sent the article to, all denied to publish it. To her delight she realized this rejection mattered a whole lot less than it used to. She went onto Open.Salon.com, a website for literary conversations, and as she put it, “All I had to do was type, and click a button marked publish”.

I totally agree with Rosen, gone are the days when the voices of the masses could not be heard, because media ran in one direction, in a broadcasting pattern with high entry fees, and a few firms competing to speak very loudly, while the rest of the population listened in isolation. A few years ago I lived in a small town, in a small island in the Caribbean call Dominica. The media houses were structured, censored, and plagued with bureaucratic red tape. The publication of information and media attention, was difficult, and very expensive. As a result of this, the voice of the masses especially those in the less developed communities was almost nonexistent. A few gifted and ambitious individuals that resided in the town of Portsmouth, decided to take the initiative to fix this, and the idea of a community website was born. Within a short period of time the site http://www.insidepossie.com/ was up and running, and it immediately placed Portsmouth on the map. This was the first community based website on the island. It was used to showcase the town’s activities, it’s natural resources, and it’s many talented individuals. Portsmouth became one of the most popular, and talked about community on the island as it’s events, and the skills of it’s  many talented residents were now displayed on a bigger stage.

The people formerly known as the audience were now speaking, as we own the eye balls on the computer screens, and broadcasting was no longer a one way street.

Web 2.0, so much fun. There is no limit to the amount of amazing things that can be done with all the different platforms and programs available today online. Memegenerator and photoshop makes it so very easy to create and edit images in all different styles and fashion. Being able to manipulate all the tools to create an image of choice, is in and of itself motivating and rewarding. According to Clay Shirky, “it’s an Intrinsic motivation”.

In light of my recent post on Cognitive Surplus and PickupPal, information has shown that over 41,214,074 lbs of potential Carbon Dioxide, Co₂ have been avoided by PickupPal. Some of their Eco-Rideshare Partners include, The United States Environmental Protection Agency, Virgin Mobile, Coachella and The Home Depot. Help save our planet, join PickupPal.

Clay Shirky has touched on many real life situations in an attempt to explore the possible outcomes, that result when we utilize new digital technology, to tap into our shared resources of talent, in order to transform the world. Cognitive Surplus vividly talks about the intersection of technological innovation and social change. In chapter 2 “Means” Shirky writes about a practical transportation problem that can now be taken on in a social way.  He explained how getting to and from work, requires significant effort, and resources, however billions undertake it five days a week. This problem at first glance appears to be media related, but one of the principal solutions available to commuting is carpooling, and the key to carpooling isn’t cars, it’s coordination. Carpooling doesn’t require new cars, just new information about existing ones. A special website, pickupPal.com is one of the new information sites, designed to coordinate drivers and riders, planning to travel along the same route. Many individuals use this site to network, and integrate into a carpooling system for economical and personal reasons.

Before I moved to the United States a few years ago, I lived in a small Caribbean Island call Dominica. I worked about one hour away from where I lived, and drove to work five days a week. On average, my gas bill was about four hundred and fifty Eastern Caribbean dollars per month (USD168). During this time I was a Hi5 member, and a frequent visitor to the site. Hi5 was very popular in the islands, and I spent several hours a day socializing with friends and family members. One of my very good friends who had just returned home after studying in China for five years, had taken up a new job in the same town where I worked. In one of our conversations on Hi5, we discovered that we worked about five minutes away from each other and he also drove to work five days a week. We immediately set a plan in motion, and decided we could travel together, and alternate the days we drove to work. The next day we met online again, but this time invited some other friends to join the conversation. By the end of the night, we were able to team up with two other friends, who lived in our area and took the same route as we did daily. Collaboratively we decided to carpool, so instead of the four of us driving to work in four different cars, we agreed to ride in one car. A different person would drive their car each week.

This mutual agreement was a very economical, and successful undertaking that was initiated through social media. We were able to find an aggregate solution that benefited all parties involved and it saved us a lot of money. In using this carpooling system, we were all able to cut our gas bill by 75%, because instead of each one spending $450ec (usd168) a month, we spent only $113ec (usd42), since each person only drove for one week. Just as Shirky explained, the logic of digital media allows people formerly known as the audience, to create value for one another every day. I am a living example to this notion and as such, totally identified with Shirky in this, and many other real life scenarios.

Many people find it very difficult to balance their accounts at the end of the month, and some even pay bankers and accountants to do it for them. However balancing your account can be a very easy process. As an accounting major, and having worked at a bank for several years, I would like to share some of my knowledge and experience with you, and show you how to reconcile your account in just a few simple steps.

Firstly, you will need to set up a simple table in which you will keep a record of all your transactions. This can be done in a journal manually, or using a simple spreadsheet in excel. This table should consist of 5 columns labeled Date, Withdrawals/Debits, Deposits/Credits, Description, and Balances. Each transaction will be entered in a separate row, as a result the number of rows will vary. As soon as this is done you are ready and on your way.

The next step is to enter the balance in your account at the beginnng of the month, under the balance column in your spreadsheet or journal. Every transaction done throughout the month must be recorded, keeping a brief description of the payee, check number or place of transaction in the description column. It is very important to ensure that all transactions are entered, because the omitting of a single entry will put the account out of balance.

At the end of the month make a subtotal of all your withdrawals in the withdrawal column, and a subtotal of all the deposit in the deposit column. To find you ending balance, add the amount in the deposit column to you beginning balance and subtract the withdrawals. Alternatively the calculations can be done after every transaction, adding the deposits and subtracting the withdrawals from your ending balance respectively. If you are using an excel spreadsheet the calculations will be done for you.

You are now one step away from reconciling you account. If your balance corresponds to the balance in your bank statement at the end of the month your account is balance, but it is very likely that the balances will  differ. In many cases there will be transactions done by the bank that will not appear in you personal records. These transactions include interest, service charges, automatic payments and direct deposits from your employer. All the transactions in the deposit section of you bank statement should be added to the balance in your personal record, and all those in the debit section should be subtracted. Sometimes a few checks you issue will not be presented for payment by the end of the month, and will not appear on the bank statement. Simply subtract these amounts from the balance on the bank statement. At this point the balance in your spreadsheet/personal records should be equal to the balance in your bank statement, your account has been reconciled.

Transcoding is the direct digital to digital data conversion of one encoding to another, usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format, or has limited storage capability and mandates reduced file size. It may also be used to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better supported or modern format. Manovich refers to transcoding as the most substantial consequence of the computerization of media. This is because he discribes this process as one in which media objects are translated into other formats, specifically the digital format in which the digitalization of the culture, subjects the culture  at large, to the concepts and rules of the computer. Manovich sees new media as having two distinct layers, the cultural layer and the computer layer. The computer layer consist of digital data or numeric codes that are processed, manipulated, and transformed by the computer. While the cultural layer is the images, files and documents that are able to be processed by the human mind.

According to Manovich, the computer layer is dynamic and constantly changing over time, as software and hardware keep evolving, and as the computer is used to perform different tasks. We can therefore asked the question, how does these changes affect new media? New media can be seen as a product of old media, or media created, distributed, and stored by computers, and as such, these changes in computer systems are sure to influence the changes and dynamics of new media. This clearly show how the cultural layer and the computer layer influence each other, and how transcoding facilitates complex relationships between the system of organizations of culture, and the means by which we affect those systems in computing.

Based on the concepts from new media, the culture layer, and the computer layer have fused to create a new computer culture, which is a blend of human and computer meanings, of traditional ways in which human culture modeled the world, and the computer’s own means of representing it. In light of this it is safe to conclude that human culture will keep evolving, and advancing, and the culture of the computer, and the media is sure to move in the same direction.

I can honestly say that I am totally fascinated by technology, and cannot over emphasize the way the advancements in new media, have changed our lives, and brought five huge continents together, in a very small global village. A few years ago I was very much involved in social networking, and spent alot of time on Hi5, Myspace, and MSN instant messenger. During this time all I did was, connected with friends, played games, and looked at what other people were doing. It was rather interesting cathing up with family members, and old friends, but it was also very time consuming.

A few years later when the other social nerworking sites like twitter, and facebook started emerging, I never felt the need or any sense of emergency to jump on board, although many of my friends were becoming fanatics. In addition I really could not figure out how social networking was making me a better person, or how it was positively impacting my life. At the same time many stories were surfacing about how people’s privacy were being violated, and I clearly remembered hearing of several incidents on TV, with individuals losing their jobs, because of conversatons they had on facebook. Conversations they thought were safe, and secured, but were published for the entire world to see.

As a result of these negatives, I chose to stay away from the major social networks, and never became part of the facebook obsession. I recently opened a twitter account, and started blogging for educational reasons, and because it was a requirement for this course.