Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Terms as Found on http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/

Terms as Found on http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/


Web video: Short clips of video that are found on the internet.

Viral video: The term refers to video clip content which gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing websites.

User-driven video: Online video’s made by users of the website. Could include video’s found on youtube that are posted by users.

Custom interactive video: Video posted by users that other users can than respond to.

Embedded video ads: Video ads that are embedded in websites and play without any user interaction.


Web-based VOD: systems that allow users to select and watch video and clip content over a network as part of an interactive television system.

Broadband television: involves accessing multimedia content via an unmanaged broadband connection and viewing it on a PC or sometimes a normal TV.

Diavlogs: A sort of online video dialog blog between two or more users.

Vcasts: A product of version wireless that allows its subscribers to download music, television clips, and other media material.

Vlogs: (video Blogs): a blog that comprises video. Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata.

Video podcasts: is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand video clip content. Most commonly this content is found through itunes.

Mobisodes: is a term first coined by Fox Broadcasting Company, for a broadcast television episode specially made for viewing on a mobile telephone screen and usually of short duration (from one to three minutes).

Webisodes: an episode of a television show that airs initially as an Internet download or stream as opposed to first airing on broadcast or cable television.

Mashup: A derivative work consisting of two pieces of (generally digital) media conjoined together in some interesting way, such as a video clip with a different soundtrack applied for humorous effect, or a digital map overlaid with user-supplied data.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

From News to Noises: Rhizome.org

From News to Noises: Rhizome.org

When I first looked at rhizome I focused more on the main page and the nature of the site to post art related news at a very up to the minute pace. However I have begun to realize how much more this site has to offer. As I left the main page of the site I moved into the Art Base where people post there online art in many forms, flash art, video art, audio art. One piece in particular that I liked was called "Birdsongs: The Language Gene" by Debra Swack.

What the Bird Song Piece does is that it allows us to hear bird chirp or song composed into music. Debra Swack tells us that “Birds not only sing songs but improvise upon their creations. In fact studies have shown that they never sing a song exactly the same way twice. A typical song is only a few seconds long but can consist of fifty or more individual notes that can be as short as a ten thousandth of a second. A bird can sing a song up to five times faster than a human can utter the equivalent in syllables” (Swack). In addition birds also have the ability to sing with themselves. The piece itself uses many different bird calls from many different birds non of which relate to each other or sound remotely alike, but at the same time create a choir of birds and a musical piece that works, it sounds like song.

Rhizome also has a Text Base w3hich almost serves like a forum in nature. It “contains the conversations, commentary and listings of events and opportunities that have passed through our mailing lists over the past decade” (rhizome.org).

Rhizome seems to be a great tool for New Media communication. It gives readers the ability to access news relating to the field, communicate with each other and even post their works.

No Pity At All

Televisionwithoutpity.com, Twop for short, is exactly that without pity. This site offers one the opportunity to reflect on television programming almost immediately after it airs. They do have a hired staff that writes the reviews but at the same time it appears that the staff it also critical fans of the programming. Reviews tend to include episode plot summery with witty remarks about the episode. From there one has the option to enter forums and talk about whatever they wish in regards to the episode. Well within reason that is. Now the forums take on there own entity as a whole. There are forums for shows covered by Twop as well as forums separated by genre, for example Sci-fi, Soaps, sports, Reality TV. One of my favorite forums is the Rec Room. Know for its zany recreational forum topics including my motivation is this, a picture based caption contest where forum members can post any image from a television show they wish with funny comments. More than anything Twop shows me how revolutionary or media world has become. We now have a world where television viewers have the opportunity to reflect on programming they watch and voice there opinion.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

New Media News???

New Media News???

While looking at Rhizome.org, I couldn’t help but feel like I was looking at a paper dedicated directly to new media. Not so much in the technology aspect of it, but in the art aspect. As you scroll down the main page, I see things such as recent news relating to New Media, community news, and short articles based on media related subjects. Links at the top of the site includes projects that they are working on like the new media museum or correction the “New Museum of Contemporary Art” in lower Manhattan. They also have a children’s program for introducing them to new media. They even have an art base containing hundreds of new media art pieces. I think that it is great that this site exists and I am excited about what it means to have an online community based solely on New Media Culture.

Reality for Pixels

Reality for Pixels

In Lev Menovich’s Essay, “What Is Digital Cinema”, he talks about the advances in cinema and the moving picture. One point that he makes that I found incredibly interesting is the fact that he says once live video is uploaded to a computer the computer reads it as it would any other image it reads it in pixels. This allows one to skew reality, to animate it to ones need. Life action as Lev Menovich says is, “reduced to just another graphic, no different from images that were created manually. One example he uses is the opining scene is forest Gump with the feather floating through air. Although this is meant to look real it is not. The feather was filmed on blue screen in different positions and animated together.

This idea as a whole is fascinating. We no longer have reality and not reality in film. We no longer have real and animated, or live action and special effect separate, we have them together. For example when “Star Wars” first came out, the special effect in it were amazing, no one had ever scene effects like it before, but at the same time, except for the light saber scenes characters were not interacting much with special effects. Unlike today with say “Transformers”, or even “Star Wars Revenge of the Sith.” We have characters that are digitally made interacting in a “real” environment. The fact that today’s technology could make Yoda on a computer and have him doing back flips all over the screen or have giant robots interact with humans and turn into things we use in everyday life. And then there are Movies like “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”, which was completely shot on blue screen, everything the characters interact with was digitally made. It fascinates me how far we come but at the same time I am hoping that we don’t through reality completely out the window.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Waiting On A Computer That’s Barbaric!

Waiting On A Computer That’s Barbaric!

Erkki Huhtamo’s article From Cybernation to Interaction is a reflection of where computers have come. It is funny now a days to think that at one point in our history we would wait around a room sized computer waiting for it to compute a simple operation. But wait this wasn’t five thousand years ago, heck it was barely fifty. It never seems to amaze me how far the computer and technology business has come. Yet at the same with the turnaround on new technology today its almost scary that we can only see these computers as something out of classic sci-fi.

Also another thing is the speed at which computers can now work. I remember when I first got internet at my house how it was a good thing if you could go to three or four websites in an hour. Today if I am forced to use dial up anywhere, I sit contemplating the best way to destroy the computer. In my mind that someone would wait for a day just to have the machine compute two plus two is beyond my comprehension, I just can’t conceive it. But that’s technology, and I am sure in 10 years people will think the way we used computers is barbaric.

Questions for Allan Appel

Timothy Anderson

NMC 331

Questions for Allan Appel

1.) Except for dark periods of mudslinging and muckraking I believe that the news has always at least tried to present the facts in as little of a biased way as possible. Some of course are better at this than others. However my question is do you believe that local journalism has to live up to the same expectations if local journalism is reaching to a particular area or type of people?

2.) What do you personally feel are the benefits and disadvantages of printed papers and online papers?

3.) What is your op-pinion on Blogging, whether in response to a news article at a online news site or a private blog?

How to Store and What to Store. Medium is the Memory

How to Store and What to Store.

In reality, what is the difference between a book ad a computer, between a movie and a novel? In reality, not much. As Florian Brody essay The Medium is the Memory explains such devices are simply places to hold memory. And by memory I don’t mean megabits and gigabits but no memory as information different forms of information. When one reads a book one sees the memory of a character or a tale. The same with a film or a TV show, although it is visual it is also the tale or memory of a person, event, ect.

Than what can I say is a computer simply the more advanced form of a book, in many ways yes it is. It allows us to engage in memory, weather or own or someone else’s. When we go to a website and read something there we are engaging in the memory of that websites information. But does advancing technology make the memory better? I’m not so sure. As Brody says early in his essay, “why take the trouble to dream when you can easily consume what has already been visualized?” I disagree with this, I think we should always dream because I guarantee if anyone else tries to visualize what we have already seen in our dreams they will always come up short. Just take a look at any book that has become a film.

Is Hypertext a Collage?

Is Hypertext a Collage?

In Hypertext as Collage-Writing, George Landow brings forth the claim that hypertext is becoming the collage of the online world. Personally I’m not excited. The form of the hypertext collage in my mind is too blocky to mundane. For me, collages have always been about the abstract message, how to bring out what you are trying to say in an artistic way. The imperfection is what makes the collage interesting. For instance, if one were to make a collage about families, it would be the way you cut the pictures, or rip out the articles that would make it intriguing; to me an online collage or hypertext does not hold the realness of the artwork. I mean you can look at a painting online all you want, but to see it in real life is the true delight, to see the brushstrokes up close and the minute detail. Maybe I just don’t understand the concept of hypertext writing correctly but to me it just does not hold the same feeling as the real thing.

Laying it out with the Hyper Local Sites

Laying it out with the Hyper Local Sites

After being intruded in class to Hyper Local news sites like the New Haven Independent I began to think about how these sites are formatted in how they compare to each other. Using the New haven Independent as a starting point I decided to take a look at the Chi Town Daily News and the Voice of San Diego.

I noticed that all three structure there main page differently. The New Haven Independent has paragraph long blurbs about there stories on the main page including pictures with links that take you into the stories. To the right of this they have links to their sponsors and to the left an Extra Extra column and to the left of that links to important sites in the new haven area including other papers.

The Chi Town Daily News seems to have a very different format on its front page. To left center of the top of the page they placed a Photo Gallery but the funny thing is that they do not tell you what the photograph is in relationship to. They don’t tell you what the story is behind it. The rest of the main page is broken up into categories for example breaking news sports or culture. In these areas they give you titles for stories but nothing else, so a reader like has little idea if they actually want to read the article.

The Voice of San Diego has a beautiful layout on the front page. Everything about it screams professional news paper, including the fact that they use a similar font to that of the New York Times. Similar to the Chi Town Daily News in the fact that they separate story by category it differs in the fact that it gives a small blurb about what the article is about similar to The Independent. I also thought that they intelligently placed pictures and promotional material and loved that they has a section on the main page devoted completely to Hot Topics in the San Diego area.

Leaving the main page and going to the articles themselves the Voice of San Diego post the articles listed as Top Stories with no pictures or anything on the page to grab the reader’s eye. This is disappointing to me after such a well placed main page to have a dull article page. Nothing keeps me interested in what the writer has to say. Now granted as I continued to check out articles and some included photographs, but how do you call something a top story and then not grab the reader’s eye visually. The Chi Town Daily news ended up being similar, about half of there stories had photographs and even those that did were not very stimulating.

The New Haven Independent5 however I thought was brilliant with there understanding of how to visually capture a reader. Stories at the Independent sometimes even had two or three photographs for articles which helped lead the article visually. Also photo’s on the site seems to have a depth with most including foreground, middle ground, and background. They also leave room for comments at the end of the article so that readers can see how other reader’s responded directly to that article.

Between the three I think that the Chi Town Daily News is the weakest. Visually poor in nature it did little to captivate me to the site. However I do like both the Voice of San Diego and the New Haven Independent. Do to layout of their sites they both seemed to have a way of keeping me at the site looking for more information.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Profiles or Avatars

Profiles or Avatars

In William Mitchell article, Replacing Place he talks about how the internet is becoming a type of online coffee shop where one can go and meet other people. He talks about the evolution of avatars and online communities. He believes that online communities, where one creates a character to explore the online world Mitchell believes is the main way of networking in the future.

However Mitchell’s article is slightly dated and does not include profile sites, something that I feel is far more efficient than an avatar. With Profile sites like Myspace or Facebook one has the power to control what information about themselves they want to share and who there wish to network with by “adding” them as “friends”. This is highly different than an avatar. With an avatar you can create any character you want, you don’t have to be you. With this in mind I fear networking with avatars because you really don’t know who you are talking to. With a Profile site if you feel someone is suspicious, you can simply delete them from your friends list.

However Mitchell is right about one thing, digital communities are growing. One very popular online world is the World of Warcraft where gamers interact online with other gamers. Although not acting as themse3lves and instead a fictional character none the less this environment seems to grow every day.

Is Mitchell right are online communities replacing place, I don’t think so. Although it is providing us with another means of communication and networking, I have a felling that people will always meet in coffee shops and at the mall.