Week 15- The End of Everything

Wow, this class just kinda flew by didn't it?

It's kinda weird to evaluate my position in the cloud from the beginning. After all, I signed up for this class as my top choices were all full. As such, there was already a lot I knew. I knew about Audacity, Photoshop, making videos and all that jazz.

Of course, there was still even more that I learned throughout this class. There was the whole presentation deal, more detail on making websites, and other alternatives for the things I mentioned above such as online substitutes for Photoshop in case you just don't happen to have the money for that.

Overall, I'd say while there was a lot I knew, this class threw even more into the growing pile of "things one can accomplish online"

But then we have to look into the future and see where that is going to take us. I got an internship up at a small tv studio to get even more experience in the video department, and then next fall I'm going to Keene State College to major in Film Production...so I think we can figure out what I'm trying to do. I mean, the video was something I just kinda got done without a second thought and something I've had experience with, and what I consider to be fun.

Though I'll be honest, the less I have to do anything that requires arts and crafts, the happier I'll be as an individual. I'm just really bad at handling that.

In the end, this class did teach me new things about the internet as a whole and I do not regret taking it. I hope all of you have a good time doing whatever it is you're doing in the future but this is Dmitri Freeman signing out.

Week 14- Remixes

I don't know for sure if I ever agreed on a topic so much for one of these blog posts but this might take the cake. All this talk of copyright law being outdated and how just about everything is a "remix" of something else in someway is absolutely true.

Let's take this in two parts and talk about the copyright part first. I want you to go onto Youtube and watch just about anything. I'll let you decide because I'm just a great guy. There is around an 85% chance that the video you just viewed does is indeed breaking some copyright law of some kind. Whether it's playing some music or showing clips from some movie or game, a lot of videos are without a doubt breaking some copyright laws. The point is though, is that it's not a big deal. Unless you're Disney or some other huge company, it doesn't really matter if something is circulating Youtube. Let's take all those Colbert remixes for instance. He did say not to make them so people would indeed make the videos, but let's say he didn't mention that at all and people still made videos based off the interview anyway. I can bet you everything that he would not be running around trying to sue everyone who made the video for breaking the almighty copyright law. Of course, these are Youtube videos and are...sometimes not making money (Times are changing here and there so it's interesting) and even the people who are often time use video games or something as their topic which is technically breaking some copyright law, but it simply doesn't matter. Unless we want to hound just about every human being who has access to the internet, the law is outdated and needs to change.

As for the "everything is a remix of something else" topic, I'll keep this one short but I have one key example. Something I rarely talk about if not mentioned at all is that I sometimes compose music. Nothing special and to be honest they're not super great but I do. Besides, it's nothing more than a hobby. But I can say though when I come up with a song that DOES work, it is inspired by some other song out there. Of course, it isn't plagiarism or anything because I do change it quite a bit. But in the end, the inspiration is still there. The idea that everything you make is a remix of something else isn't a bad thing, it's simply the truth behind inspiration.

And that's what all this boils down to. You get inspired by something and want to do something similar as a result.

Week 13: Generation F

With evolving technology, younger children are inevitably going to grow up around this new technology. This leads us to Generation F. Children now are growing up with things such as Facebook and Twitter, and thus things are going to be very different.

The biggest change I can imagine in the future is a change in social interaction. Letters are going out cause you can just email someone whatever you want. You're probably not going to have long phone calls either catching up cause you can do a quick glance at someone's Facebook page and boom you know everything you need to know.

Another major change would be people making a ton of new things. Number 2 on the list delves into this as thanks to online, people just make what they want. They don't need to be a rocket scientist to make a video or something. Technology is making it so easy for people just to sit down and make what they want without a lot of experience. Of course, this also has downsides as you're going to end up with a lot of...mediocre content as that's what happens when you allow just about anyone to upload a video onto Youtube. You will get lower quality media. While there will be more content, the quality will not be as good.

Overall, this new Generation F will directly impact our future. As kids will have grown up with all this new social media and nothing else that it will just be what they're knowledgeable in. Old ways will be thrown away and new ways through technology will be the way of the future. That's just how it goes when you grow up with a certain something, you simply don't know much about the "olden days".

Week 12- The Long Tail

This is an interesting topic isn't it? The basic idea that thanks to the internet, things are a lot easier to find, and a lot is in higher demand than one might think. This mostly stems into helping small known people get some attention through recommendations on a website such as Amazon, or opening up a wider selection of options not found anywhere else.

It's kind of funny, as in a way this affected me rather recently. I have a small silly Youtube channel which is nothing special, but after a recent trailer for a game (Super Smash Bros if you care) I took a small clip of it and put it to a random Backstreet Boys song (I promise it makes more sense in context and it's not a completely random choice) While I'm not sure how, at some point some site recommended the video because the views skyrocketed to numbers that are just crazy for a video that is 7 seconds long. As such, my lame channel got a little bit more attention. Not a lot, but it is a minor example of this trait with the internet showing off things no one would have known about.

On a different note, I basically learn of all my music and such through seeing some recommended videos on Youtube or something on iTunes. It once again proves itself that it is great at raising awareness of other things. And as the article says, there's a lot of it, and all of it is available with the click of a button. Now that's pretty crazy.

Week 11: Podcasts

I've had an interesting relationship with podcasts, and my interesting I actually mean that I barely listen to them. Though I'll get into that in a minute.

For what they are, podcasts are simple, yet effective. All you have is a person, or maybe a couple of people just talking about anything. It could range from current events, to tv shows, to what they are cooking in the microwave. From a certain standpoint, I would even consider them better than blogs as you can hear more of the person's inflection which gives you a much better idea of their tone in comparison to plain text.

Though I hit a fatal flaw with listening to podcasts in the idea that I get bored. This isn't talking about a boring podcast in general, even if I'm listening to a really humorous guy, I'll still get bored of listening to the podcast. It might stem from the fact that I want to do something, or nothing else but a guy's voice for a solid hour can get boring, but I can rarely sit through one. Basically, I need to be reading something else or playing a game while listening to a podcast in order to sit through the whole thing. And even then I need to hopefully not space out on what the podcast is saying, which is very likely.

I will repeat myself saying I think podcasts are really cool, but I need something to distract me while listening to them or I'll lose interest doing nothing. It's a bit of a shame, but what are you going to do?

Week 9- A rather silly vlog

Ok, so this vlog is a thing. It's short and silly so I hope you enjoy.

Week 8: Presentations

After watching Hans Rosling's presentation on statistics, I was impressed for various reasons. The presentation itself was interesting and Rosling seemed rather entertaining. Of course, that's not the important part, but rather the presentation itself.

I was rather impressed with the technology used to make this presentation. Usually I'm used to Powerpoint which is very simplistic and there's not a whole lot of fancy things you can do with it. Yet this presentation managed to pull off a whole ton of neat things that you wouldn't see in a Powerpoint presentation. What really impressed me the most was near the end when it had a small animation of all the countries moving from one "box" to the other as the years went by. When I hear the words "presentation" my mind usually goes towards some slide by slide kind of thing. However this was incredibly fluid, and even if it technically was a slide by slide thing, it was smooth and fast enough that it wasn't choppy and was very appealing and interesting to look at.

The presentation also did a great job helping hitting his point home. After all, he could have talked about everything just the same, but having the huge neat presentation behind him helped back up his points, and gave the audience something to look at. And that's something I feel is rather important. While the things were simple, just graphs and circles, it still was visually interesting because they made a point, and weren't disgusting to look at.

I really enjoyed the presentation. Watching everything flow together was really nice and it was one of the better ones I've seen.