New Media means new ideas, take a chance...

This interview is hosted by Kerri Nolan and Bob Garfield. I was asked for my final blog to listen to and respond to one of the articles from On the Media. I went into the movies category and listened to an article titled “Silver Screen’s Silver Bullet?”Bob starts off by saying, “When u look at the wrong numbers the film industry seems to be doing very well especially compared to music and TV area of production.” Apparently this is not the case. People want more, and more is what we have to give them. The box office revenue for the year 2007 was 9.6 billion dollars, a 5 percent increase from the year before but according to statistics that increase has a lot to do with the increase of ticket sales. As the population grew the number of tickets sold have remained flat. This is quite shocking to me. Also with the advances with the picture and sound quality in home theatres the ubiquity amount of dvd’s and video games, the industry is trying to restore the Cineplex to increase the quality of seeing films, and increase the want to see films. Both of these factors are very important and without them you will not make money. The question is how do they do this? Some are relying on digital and 3-D technology.The nest Pixar film will be in 3-D as will the two re-releases of both Toy Story movies. James Cameron, Robert Zemekis, and Peter Jackson are all working on 3-D productions. DreamWorks, Jeffery Cattenburg believes that 3-D animated films will boldly go in the right direction. I agree with this. I think it could be a real hit. People today love what’s new and what’s fresh and 3-D is where it’s at. New media comes with the ability to have new ideas and 3-D with more movies would definitely increase my desire and want to see them. It’s all about making the public happy. After all isn’t it called the entertainment industry?

Traditional Journalism vs. New Media

It seems like everything is converting these days. Life around us is constantly changing. For this blog I was asked to write about my viewpoints/opinions on this issue. In this day and age everything is technology and most people prefer new media as oppose to traditional journalism. I find it very interesting that we somehow push traditonal journalism aside after it has been a part of our lives for decades. Many of us are forgetting about it almost completely. People dont need newspapers and magazines anymore and they are sadly coming to an end. Not as much in the magazine industry because you still get your valued loyal customers that like to flip through magizines in their free time and even possibly cut out pictures. For example, many young girls I know my age love magazines. They buy them religiously month to month and some even have year subscriptions. They use their magazines for many different uses. One of them is to read up on what is going on in the entertainment world. Another is to save the pictures and lastly is to read and discuss what is going on in all the different articles they offer. As oppose to newspapers magazines don't have a layout that will be the same for every magazine. Newspapers have the sports section, fashion,business,food,entertainment,ect. Magazines offer a variety of different articles that are meant to attract the reader and relate as well as keep our interest. When you buy a magazine or newspaper you have the opportunity to look at the whole picture rather that just one article. You have the chance to accidently drop your magizine or newspaper and stuble across an acrticle that may change your life forever. Its beautiful to know that chance really does exist, everywhere, all the time and sometimes all it takes is the readers curiousity of one article to just stumble acriss something they might in fact enjoy. It could be a idea, testimony or news that will cnage their life. With online news you dont have that opportunity. The same goes for watching television because, all though they may inform the definitely dont tell you all of what is going on. Don't get me wrong, I really love new media and what it has done and all that it changed but I like to have the choice/option to be able to view all different ways to see it. I dont like that most people want to totally eliminate newspapers, because thats just not right.The new media vs. traditional journalism issue should not be a fight but rather a transition. In my eyes its unmoral because my friends, without traditional journalism new media would cease to exist.

The use of vocabulary in slogans

For this blog we were asked to demonstrate that we read and understood several new media terms. I chose to demonstrate these words in a very simple way as a form of adverstisement for whatever purpose they may serve.Almost as a marketing idea/technique...Here's what I came up with...A bit corny but cute:)

Vocabulary Slogans:

Theme- Short but Simple

1.When life comes at you fast make time for Quicktime. Sound,text,video,and animation all in one file.

2.Wi-fi, "What keeps us connected."

3.Graphic Image File Formats- "GIIF a true GIIFT to compacting and compressing clutter in our messy lives."

4.Compression-"Compress to minimize files,computer space and relieve stress."

5.CODEC- "Reducing on Byte at a time.Less is best."

6.MP3- "So small,so much space. Live free, keep up with the pace."

7.3G- "Everything you'll ever need in a phone,live without need,be free."

8.Web 2.0-"Always 2 steps ahead."

9.UI- "Use what moves you,Use whats In you."

10.AJAX- "It can clean your kitchen fast and update your computer even faster. 2 different products same idea, no mess is best."

11.RSS- "Short for: reading sites simplified. Read faster, search less."

12.Wiki-"Trust is our moto, sites are our speciality,fast is our pace."

What turns your lightbulb on?.....

Yelp could be a yikes for businesses, but a necessity for consumers

For this blog entry I chose to listen to one that I thought was quite interesting. I enjoy great food and good businesses and I value what other people think of the industry as well. This interview was posted March 20th 2009 with Bob Garfield and Jeremy Stoppleman(the co-founder and CEO of YELP). The website was founded in 2004 and has reviews from ordinary people and consumers such as ourselves for everyone to access. They review anything from restaurants to nail salons. YELP started in 2004 in San Francisco and has spread to over 24 major cities and has more than 5% million reviews. Businesses are worried because critics are no longer incognito, they could be anyone,anywhere.YELP praises and bashes anything and everything when it comes to businesses. Bob Garfield asks Jeremy, " How did the idea for Yelp start? Jeremy states, We realized that people typically found new businesses searching on the internet and there must be a better way than browsing advertisements, and so what popped into our heads was a really good way to find a local business is to ask around, ask friends for recommendations, and what we tried to create was a place where you could tap into world of mouth online." Then Bob asks, " How do we know that people can give us anything worthwhile of an opinion? Food critics have expertise haven't they? Jeremy says, Food critics have a very precise pallet. What most people realize is that they don't necessarily agree with that one perspective. Yelp provides the opinions of many. You can browse around and read all the different reviews that you want until you get your fill and when you find reviews that are interesting to you you can click on that profile and learn about the person who wrote it." Bob asks, " Is there some kind of secret to reading yelp reviews and not focusing on one particular critic and somehow manage to embrace the commentary as a whole? Jeremy says, Yes when you go to a Yelp page the first thing you notice is the average star rating right there so that you have a broad sense of how that business is doing. You can also look at a number or graphs. You could see very quickly all the 5 star reviews and the 4 star reviews and even the 1 star reviews so that it gives you a overall sense of the big picture. The next thing you will see if we have enough reviews is the fact hat we use software to pull our review highlights. The things that people are talking about.It is almost always positive. The bottom of the page is the users reviews. " Bob states that 35% of "Yelpers" gave 4 our of 5 stars for any given service and 32% gave 5 out of 5 stars." Jeremy says, " If you add it all up 85% of all reviews are either neutral or positive. Bob asks a very important question, " Is there anything you can do against Yelp Fraud? Jeremy says, Absolutely there are protections in place, both from the software side as well as the consumer prospective. It is very difficult to create a personality on Yelp that dies not reflect a real person. Thats our foundation. Yelp is not an anonymous site. Most contributors have very deep profiles and reputations on Yelp." Bob asks," Do you ever delete comments that are manifestly false? Like an animal in your soup? Any protection against restaurant slander? Jeremy says, "Were not in a position to determine what exactly happened and we want to make sure all individuals can share their experiences openly. That said if a business finds something that is clearly outside of review guidelines we will absolutely look into in and pull it down. This is word of mouth. Mostly good rather than bad." In my opinion Yelp is a wonderful website that allows everyday ordinary people such as ourselves(the consumers) to let our voices be heard. This is important in this day and age and technology yet again is how people hear each others opinions and let their voices be heard. It's not just food critics anymore in the business and that is what I like because Jeremy is right when he says that many food critics have a precise pallet and many people don't agree with their taste. Overall I believe Yelp is a wonderful tool that allows us as individuals to voice our opinions and listen to others and then make our decision. It's in a sense word of mouth but really word of type.! Once again New Media prevails. Not a surprise:)

A Shrug Goodbye to some,heartbreak to others

For this blog I was asked to respond to one of the entries from On the Media. Brook Gladstone and Bob Garfield are the host and for this week one of their focuses is the ongoing dilemma of the death of newspapers. They said that just this week the Seattle Post, Intellegencer, and the San Fransico Chronicle have been struggling to survive and are on the verge of decline. The question is how much do people outside the media care about the death of newspapers? The answer- not so much. A recent poll from Dupre research center said"not so much"and fewer than one fourth of those under forty years old say that they would really miss the local newspaper they read most often if it were to fold. Only one thrid between the ages of forty to sixty-four say that they would care. The only group that responded in majority that they would really miss the newspaper is the sixty-five and older crowd. This did not surprise me. Bob says,It's not about missing the newspaperits about the untold stories that never get told and the toll it would take on the community. Andrew Cohud who is the president of Dupu Research Center says"In fact most people that we polled didn't care too much about living in a town with no newspaper." Andrew Cohud states, " What we found was only 43% of people that they questioned thought that civic life in their local community would hurt alot of newspapers closed and a meer 33% said that they would miss newspapers if they no longer existed."One belief that seems to be a valid point is that young people don't seem to be bothered at all by the death of newspapers. I myself would be upset because I like old fasioned things and I do enjoy to read the newspaper so this generalization does not apply to me. Andrew basically says that you have to be over the age of sixty-five to really appreciate and say that newspapers play and important role in American society. Bob Garfield asks to Andrew "When your interviewers were asking these questions were they making it clear to the respondent that with the death of newspapers comes the death of online product as well?" Andrew states ," No, they weren't making that point and it's probably something that is worth considering but alot of the reason is people are thinking that their local communites news would not be effected is because they believe that television produces a lot of the crutial repoting in local communities and that is where people are going for their local news rather than newspapers. I myself tend to not watch alot of television so I read the newspaper whenever I get the chance . To conclude, in my eyes it is a shame that newspapers are declining because I believe they are the root of communicating to the world and now they are getting overlooked because of technology. In this day and age the world is all technology when sometimes we should take a step back and appreciate and value how the news started and that my friends is the newspaper.

Hypercities...The new textbook?

For the first blog that we were asked to write we had to look at hypercities.com. Hypercties is a very interesting site that allows viewers to look at cities from the past. I found this website quite interesting because in my eyes its basically like history on the internet. In my opinion i think hypercities can help people to understand what the past was like. It a great geography tool if you ask me. With all this new media hypercities could be the new geography text book. If it doesn't fully replace the textbook it will or should most definitely be a part of the educational curriculum. For example one place I was able to look at was New York city from the 1980's. You were able to see the world trade center clearly which was a bit saddening because of what had happened to it in 2001. You can also look at other cities and if you examine and use the site properly and get something very sustaining out of it. Its also good from a economical standpoint so you can see how much the world has changed and what industries and building have gone up. The world around us today is fully of new media and hypercities is just another tool that enables us to take part in this trend. To sum it up hypercities is a great tool because it can be used in schools for educational value as well as personal use. Whatever the case is hypercities is changing the world....one view at a time

Books-The Oldest of New Media?

For my third blog I was asked to download a story from a website called www.onthemedia.org. On the Media is a weekly hour long radio program produced by WNYC, public radio in New York.We were asked to choose a story that related to new media in some way or another. I selected a story from the "Media Biz" link in the left hand column. It was titled "One for the Books". It was hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone. They begin by talking about the theme of their show from week to week. Bob says that there main theme for the show seems to be" New Media is thriving, old media is dying."They talk about how old media and new media are slowly merging together. The show I chose was first aired last fall which they said was "devoted to the oldest of old media, books."Where, how and in what form people will be buying books is a question that is up in the air. They state that 60% of all books are not bought in book stores but are purchased at airports, checkout counters,walmart,costco,and toys r us.11% are purchased from amazon.com and the rest are bought at book stores but mostly big chains. They also state that The Membership of the American Booksellers Club Association which serves inderpendent book stores has dropped 5000 books to 1700 in the last decade. They say that in this day and age publishers have to put muscle behind books that can sell themselves. One interesting fact that I did not know is that corperate chains like Barnes and Nobels and Borders reserve there "real estate" for the highest rollers. The books on the front tables aren't there by popular demand they are there because they were paid by the publisher for a certain kind of distrobution called co-op(product placement). They talk about when you go to buy a book from a independent book seller your taken care of by that book seller which is comforting because they know there material and books. In the last 4 years the only segments of the book industry that have increased or maintained market share have been online and independent stores. They also talk about a machine that can publish books on the spot. As long as the book is digitized any book can be available at any store at any time. Some say the problem is too many books. How are you supposed to publisize and market all those books?...The next topic they discuss is how much impact Opreah has on book lovers. Since she has her own book club she reviews and recomends books often. For example, one book that Opreah suggested sold almost 1 million copies. They stress that Opreah really does have a impact on book consumers. Another topic they discuss is google library. Google library users will be able to browser full text of public domain material but only get a few sentences into books still covered by copyright. Some publishers are not in favor of this idea because they feel they should have the right to earn a profit when people read there material but in fact it's quite the oppisite. Google library is providing a tool that will help the publisher make books more relevant than they are today. The truth is, a sample of the text helps drive sells. 200,000 books are published a year. 2,000 authors make there quota and are known while 198,000 need to try something else.How do you feel about all of this?..Books too old for this world full of new media?