(Don't) Vote.

Don't be scared of the title - it has to do with the video, I swear. I found this on a friends blog and tracked it back to YouTube. I thought it was a cool video about voting.

Election Day and Next Thursday's Class

Please bring your computers to class next Thursday.

And just to remind you, we won't be having class on Tuesday, Election Day. Instead please 1) check out at least two alternative or independent news sources and two mainstream news sources; 2) talk to people about how they are getting their news and communicating with people about the election day news; 3) volunteer or do something to help someone vote--give someone a ride to a polling place, volunteer at a polling place, get your friends to vote; 4) blog about it here (and don't forget to include links). And, of course VOTE if you have not already.

Here are the discussion questions for class on Thursday.

1. What are the strengths and weakness of open systems according to Wales?

2. Hoiberg applies this quote by Mumford to Wikipedia:
“[An explosion of information could] bring about a state of intellectual enervation (weakening) and deletion hardly to be distinguished from massive ignorance.” He goes on to say what is needed is “selectivity and moral-self discipline.” What does he mean by this? And what do these comments reveal about Britannica?

3. What are the biggest challenges faced by Wikipedia?

4. Is Wikipedia democratic in process (is it run democratically?), as a product (does it give people info they need to participate in democracy?), in its effects (does it mobilize people?)?

5. What are the fundamental issues associated with each form of encyclopedia?
(For example expert vs collective intelligence, but there are many more)

Super Deluxe

One of the readings we had this week (I Like to Watch, TV) mentioned this site as a source of Internet Entertainment. I'm not a big fan of watching things online but I wanted to check out the site and see if they had anything that would change my mind. I watched a couple episodes (1 of All my Exes and another of I Hate My Roomates) but neither would be something I see going very far.

They do have a ton of shows listed, however, so if you're up to searching, you might find something worth following.

Internet TV

I found this website, called tvover.net. It's purpose is so that you can log on and find any internet tv shows or sites just by typing in keywords or categories. Once you have logged on, you can also save any shows or sites you love to your page. It is somewhat like Net Flix because it allows you to browse through a bunch of categories and it is all on an internet database rather than having a physical store where you can watch or pick up copies of internet tv shows.

you can vote however you like

I was watching the news this morning and they said that Colorado is the leading state in the nation that follows political websites and blogs. They then showed a very cute video from kids in Atlanta who are not old enough to vote, however are encouraging voting. Watch this video it is really cute.
DS

very cool, check it out

amazing!
haha, so this is hilarious! we've been talking about politics in the media and this is just awesome how they do this, and effective. watch this. anybody's name can be used. it speaks for itself. http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/index.html?nid=fTPsPTaedf_tC1psWzfYlTU1Mjg2MjI-&referred_by=11834419-ar6n7xx

Cloverfield

As I was talking about in class on thursday, JJ Abrams created a world outside the movie, including fake companies and news videos, and with deeper reading into all their websites, one can really learn a lot more about the movie.

Here's a youtube of one of the news videos that he created to supplement the video, and it goes along with an alternate storyline he created.

This is one of the companies he made up for the movie:


This is one of their products.


Without seeing the movie, and without reading a lot more into it, it's hard to see how any of it relates, but suffice it to say that they all play a large role in Cloverfield's storyline.

quarterlife Parody

"You know you've gone viral when the parodies start coming" (reelpopblog.com).  

quarterlife parody

Watching shows online

There is a huge appeal to watching shows online. Although South Park is a television show, Comedy Central has complete episodes of it from all of the seasons and a bunch of the other shows on its Web site, which kind of turns those shows into online shows. The perk of this is that there are no annoying commercials and you watch complete episodes with no interruptions. But, there are two commercials; one at the beginning and one in the middle and they cannot be skipped or fast forwarded through. Being able to watch the shows online is really convenient because it can be at anytime. Even though it's impossible to skip the embedded commercials, two commercials is better than however get played during a regular show. 

Go here to watch some South Park 

LoL

Laugh Out Loud is a Web TV series starring Josh Server and Keenan Thompson, both from the Nickelodeon show "All That". Josh is stuck in this kid show because he has no other acting gigs he can get.

Click here to view episodes of Laugh Out Loud.

Stop motion with people

Here is a cool stop motion video I found on you tube. Done by a kid, inspired by the band Ok Go. I thought it was done pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m23bL9AqB0

oh sarah palin

i also found this one about sarah palin

Star Wars Lego's

So in are readings they talked about how a bunch of star wars fans liked to make there own movie.....well i thought i would get on youtube and check things out see if i could find anything cool......i came across lego star wars and they actually do a really good job of stop and go photography you should check it out!

Here's one on Harry Potter but its not as good.

Wassssup

back to campaign videos. I found this on one youtube, and i though it was pretty amusing

Amusing

I just thought that this video on youtube would entertain you all. Some crazy person who has multiple election vlogs on youtube. It's just weird and entertaining.

Saturday Night Live's political impact

This is a CNN clip about Saturday Night Live's political impact. The CNN journalist talks to a couple people from SNL's cast about how they like impersonating these prominent political figures. Mostly they show clips of Tina Fey portraying Sarah Palin and how Palin responds to these skits.

Vote or Die

P.Diddy has his own political capaign called "Vote Or Die". I think its a good slogin to get young people to vote. having a popular rap star promoting young kids to vote. This is a funny YouTube video of P.Diddy on Southpark.

Click here to view video.

Funny Sarah Palin Video

"The Ballad of Sarah Palin" (Click the photo)

This video (titled "The Good, the Bad and the Rest of US) is one of several homemade, animated, pro-Obama videos generated by the user/artist "craynol." Also, CNN got hold of the video... here is what they had to say about this ad and other homemade election videos.

Hollywood Endorsement Song

I thought that this was a cute/fun video with a good message regarding celebrities and political campaigns.  

And I saw this video a while ago on The Tonight Show, and thought it was funny even if it is just a tad bit... umm stupid.  

here is another video i have found that is trying to get people to vote, and vote for change. It takes a different approach to getting people to vote, so be sure to watch it.

Obey Giant videos

This   Site has two interesting political videos on the home page. The first video is just an interesting look at politics through a younger generation and how people are able to display their views of politics through many ways. The second video also exhibits a modern look at people making videos to get their political views across to a lot of people. Both of these videos are pro Barack Obama, which as was said in class, he seems to be the one who appeals to younger people especially when it comes to generating art. 

McCain Videos

Like Jonathon, I was having a hard time finding pro-McCain video's. I tried searching in a lot of different ways and finally stumbled across this link to a static John McCain YouTube page. It's a page on the YouTube server completely dedicated to positive videos of McCain. He doesn't seem to have the same celebrity backers or girls in tight clothing that Obama does, but there's a fairly decent amount of videos.

I thought this was a funny one by a country singer, John Rich, called Raisin' McCain.

Positive McCain Cideo on Youtube.

It took a pretty long time to find a positive McCain video on Youtube.. which I found pretty sad whether you are voting for him or not.



But here's one that I found:

Sarah Palin

Hayden Panettiere on voting for McCain

I saw this video on a television show last week and thought it was great. Hayden Panettiere talks about how voting for John McCain is a great idea, if you think smoking and not wearing your seatbelts are also great ideas. She says pretty much everything campaign ads and many political speakers have said and that is that McCain has a lot of the same ideas as Bush. Only the way she says it is a lot funnier. As she describes McCain, "he is just like George Bush, except older and with a worse temper".

I recommend watching this video if you have a minute.

net-neutrality

Going back to net-neutrality and censoring. Virgin the internet provider in the UK, controls what you can search for, making websites load time slower, and other faster. Here is a website dedicated to stop Virgin from taking the freedom away from the Internet.

KidMedia.com

This is an Australian- owned website that is used for teachers and students. The site is used to make the learning experience for kids more fun. They help with the skills of education, writing, graphic design, etc.

Click here to view site.

Technology making children safer.. in a way

After all the articles I see about how the internet makes for a dangerous world for children, this one was a nice change of pace. Not necessarily the internet, but some advancements in technology, webcams, specifically, are becoming tools that can make children safer when their parents aren't around.

You can read about it here

Change.org

This article was posted on the front page of MSN.com. It was written by Newsweek columnist Brian Braiker and it is talking about the social network Change.org, which is a site that has approximately 120,000 members and deals with issues like ethnic cleansing, climate change, and immigration. They are currently changing their site to become a hub for latest news major issues and how to get involved. They are changing their platform to 13 individual blogs that tackle different issues and are hoping to educate people on the issues and connect them with ways to make a change for the better.

Harry Potter IP Court Case

In a publishing class I took last year I remember my teacher mentioning something about a Harry Potter fan-based website that created a lexicon (basically a reference book with information on all characters, locations, animals, etc. in the Harry Potter books) and was now trying to have it published. JK Rowling, who in the past had visited the site and praised it, decided to sue the author before he could publish it, for causing her creative grief. The case was decided this September and the judge banned the Harry Potter Lexicon from ever being published.

Read the article here. There are also more links about this story at the bottom of the article.

Thundercats

This is for everyone that hasn't seen Thundercats. I used to watch it was i was growing up and I turned out o.k. 

Social Networking Questions

For those of you who missed class, for Tuesday please do an informal survey of at least 4 friends or acquaintances about their social networking practices and habits. Here are the questions generated by the class today.

How do you choose what sites to use?
How many profiles do you have?
Why did you join at all?
If you are not a member of a SN site, why not?
How much time do you send SNing?
Who are you interacting with?
What activities are you willing to give up to spend time on a SN site? (for example sleep, paying attention in class.)

God i love south park

ok so i know where supose to put like informational stuff up here and what not but i was watching south park last night and this episode was on and it totally made me think of class and the second life thing so it kind of goes along with that.

Evangelicals' thoughts on Harry Potter

This article talks about how many Evangelicals feel that Harry Potter is pure evil because it encourages the practice of witchcraft. My favorite part of this whole article was this quote, "It is the duty of Christian parents to oppose Harry Potter and to aviod every kind of evil". What strikes me as funny is that many of these Evangelicals haven't even read the series. How can you decide what a book encourages or doesn't encourage kids to do if you haven't even read one of the books?

Comcast

If you didn't know. Comcast censors your internet. The FCC has filed a suit against them, and has required that Comcast provides more details on it network management policies. The FCC argues that it is a clear violation of the net-neutrality principles.

here is an article that talks about it. 

Also here is another article from the Wall Street Journal.

A Day in the Life of The Ever Expanding Woman

While on the hunt for interesting blogs, I found one that was almost strange to me. We all know that having a child is suppose to be one of the most magical, private, hurtful, and ecstatic things that can happen in life. However, in reality, I have no idea what it would be like to be pregnant, give birth, or the idea of raising a child. Also, at the moment, I am not particularly curious. But what if you are, what if you need some guidance, or to speak to someone who is going through the same reproductive experience as you? Well, I have found you a perfect site. If you go to this site you will find blogs by women who talked about birth, their feelings, their physical appearance, even their children. I find this an interesting blog because even though giving birth is so private as well as magical, people across the world are now talking about it on the same platform, providing guidance to people who they have never even met. But because of this one experience that can bring them together, they can converse like long lost friends.

Barnes & Noble filters Web 2.0 from how-to content

Barnes & Noble started having how-to guides and videos of experts on different topics. The reason for these videos is to face the people that big issue of user-generated content of non accurate information.

Click here to read article

Don't Skype in China

As if what we read about China and internet censorship wasn't bad enough, I found this article regarding Skype in China. Sounds like they're taking it a bit too far..

Here's the article.

PoliticalTicker

As the elections approach, I find political campaigns very important as well as influential. As we see in class, the internet is a prime source of information and sites where you can contribute your opinion are vital in the candidates success. I found this website where CNN updates us on information on the candidates, the election, the new information given by the media, along with mnay other categories to read. Some include other people that have been involved in the 2008 election, other by state, and some by dates. These are all sub categories of the Politics category, however there are also many other categories you can explore. World, U.S., Crime, and Entertainment are all available categories to investigate.

Creative Commons type of ideas

I am really interested in the Creative Commons idea, and searched around for any other perspectives and information on it. I also just wanted to read more about copyright issues and similar topics. I found some fairly interesting stories. 

This story talks about Steve Jobs of Apple in regards to DRM and his opinions. There are some valid points that get brought up. 

This  is a good story because it's about a band I like. Just kidding. It's a good story because it offers perspective from a different point of view, which is from someone who is a musician but who has been releasing music through a traditional method and tried something different. 

Making fun of Web 2.0

In class we've been seeing a bunch of great Web 2.0 websites. Well, I was on MSN earlier and their banner declaring "Web 2.0's Most Ridiculous Websites" caught my eye. I guess everything has to have a flip side.

I didn't go to every website on the list but I did go to a few.

BillMonk was especially funny because it claims to be popular among college kids. I have never even heard of it and when I took a poll, no one else had either!

YubNub was just...strange. Interesting thought behind it...but strange that they'd set up a search engine that you can command to search other search engines.

I did, however, pass along the BarbieGirls.com to a special little 6 year old diva I know. I'm sure her Mother will be thanking me soon.