Internet Activity #3

Audio Blogs:

Essentially audio blogs are a means for everyday average people to express their thoughts and opinions through a form of free mass media, the internet. Previously individuals were not able to express their thoughts and opinions on a global scale, so each new representation of speech is unique and intriguing.

The audio blogs that I viewed are the following, Hardcore history http://www.dancarlin.com/cswdc.xml and modern politics http://www.dancarlin.com/dchh.xml. Both of the audio blogs were by a guy named Dan Carlin.

Overall I found audio blogging easy to use and entertaining. I chose a program called "Prime Time Podcast Receiver", that had a very simple graphical user interface, this made the experience far more enjoyable. I wouldn't necessarily use this as a basis for media or news and it was more of an entertainment muse than anything else.

As far as the general public is concerned this would be an ideal way for them to express their thoughts and opinions if need be, and for the more voyeur demographic it provides a medium for their expression. Not everyone prefers writing their thoughts and ideas, compared to making an audio representation of just that.

The audio book has certain flaws that I would definitely think makes it inferior to reading the text on its own. First of all, the narrator of the audio book may use a tone or narrative posture that may make you inherently bias to a particular position with what you are reading. While reading it is best to keep an open and critical mind, interpreting things in your own way. With an audio version this is may bias your critique of a given work.

Video Blogs:

So for the video blogs I watched the following a chess guide http://www.chesskillertips.com/chesskillertips.xml and a "geek brief" aka a technology guide http://geekbrief.podshow.com/wp-rss2.php.

The chess guide was interesting, it gave particular strategies for certain in game scenarios and had a rather relaxed and semi-professional approach to the blog. It felt more recreational and less educational which was fine for the purpose of this assignment.

The "geek brief" guide, gave a summary of new gadgets and technology that were on the market as well as an in depth look at technology that will be released in the near future. The blog itself was very "low budget" but was most definitely informative and interesting.

I chose to embed the deep field hubble space telescope imagery in my blog. This is an excellent example of free public advertising for programs like NASA, that can reach a much larger global audience for free compared to releasing their findings via other mass media genres. Youtube is successful for a variety of reasons, the most important of which I believe to be the fact that it was the first reliable site that people identified with and chose to express themselves with. Just like with a restaurant chain such as McDonalds, people want a reliable stable experience. Youtube was the first globally recognized video website to provide those fundamental basics to the public.

Video blogging to me was en par with audio blogging, both are low budget forms of expression by the general public. The experience was easy, but not necessarily something I would pursue on a daily basis as a form of media consumption.

This form of media is bias for a variety of reasons, just like all other media. Each individual that decides to report on a given issue or cause, is only doing so to serve their own self interests. This is not unlike the larger corporations that do so as well. It is useful though for one important reason, the public has a way to speak out about injustices within their given society if need be and the world will know. This gives a new power to the general lower class public, one they previously did not have.

RSS Feeds - Internet Activity #2

Rss feeds are useful to me, primarily because it enables me to have a very generalized summary of what I am about to read. Normally you would have to go to a given website and while attempting to ascertain what you information is relevant to you, you are bombarded by advertisements. So it "cuts the fat" so to speak and enables me to fully utilize my free time by only reading what I would consider to be relevant in the first place. It allows the user to control what they are going to be reading/watching prior to doing so.

There were a few ways in which to approach adding an rss feed to my blog. The first is to manually search a website for their rss feed. The second was to google search "rss feed website name" and you were immediately given the url for their respective rss feed. The third was to simply click on the rss link image on a website which took you immediately to that websites rss feed.

The rss feed technology is definitely useful for a variety of reasons. It enables people to control what media they are exposed to. It serves as a way of organizing information so that it can be easily searched by search engines such as google or yahoo, providing a "searching infrastructure".