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 All this talk of copyright law being outdated and how just about everything is a "remix" of something else in someway is absolutely true.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.

Week 7- Audio Book Copyright.

The adventures of copyright just doesn't end. A journey that goes with you through your whole life, and probably tries to sue you along the way.

Today's topic takes us to the copyright of Kindle. In specific, the idea over a robot voice reading a book out loud and how that breaks copyright law.

...What?

So while I don't use a Kindle or any kind of E-book, I do know they are meant for reading. A big shocker there I know. As such, I absolutely cannot see the problem with a voice reading the book out loud. Maybe if they were paying some voice actor money to read a book it would be different, but from what I can gather this is a robotic voice just reading a book.

So instead of dissecting this whole thing, I'll leave a question. Let's say you're sitting in your bed sick or something and someone you know comes up and offers to read a book. Any book, I'll even let you decide. They then begin to read it out loud. Now, is this breaking any copyright law? Absolutely not. Books were made for reading and listening, the latter if someone is reading the book out loud. That is fine as it should be. So what is the problem with doing the SAME EXACT thing, except having a robot doing the reading instead of a parent or a friend?

To sum it up, I just can't see how having an audio book would be against copyright. All it is is a robotic voice reading you the book which is the purpose of the whole thing.

The entire case just seems incredibly silly.

Oh, if you read this blog out loud I'm gonna sue you for copyright. Just saying.

Week 6- The Depths of Plagiarism

...These titles don't make a lot of sense.

I was a tad surprised to hear that the rather infamous "Hope" picture of Obama had copyright surrounding it, as I was convinced it was an actual ad campaign by Obama himself. So hearing the fact that not only did some random guy make it, but that there is attempted legal action against it was a bit of a shock.

So after doing some research on the whole business, I find the fact that AP seems rather keen on taking Fairey and his poster down. There's just a few things that seem rather odd in the whole deal.

I do have to see Fairey probably should have given some credit to Garcia, the man who took the photo in the first place. But no only was the edit not used at all to make a profit, it was for politics alone, but Garcia has stated he doesn't mind his photo was altered into the well known poster. The real drama here is coming from AP, the company that hired Garcia to take the photo of Obama in the first place. This leads us to a whole situation of who owns the photo in the first place.
While the photo was used by AP and they tasked Garcia to take the photo, it still is Garcia's photo at the end of the day. And it feels like he should have more say than the company that merely published the picture. If Garcia was upset his picture was used, this would be an entirely different story. But judging off the fact that he was fine, I believe he should have more say than AP in this situation. And in that case, that leaves Fairey more in the right side of things. As I said, credit would have been nice and would have probably made this situation a lot cleaner, but judging by Garcia's reaction and the original purpose of the picture, I believe it should be fine and not count as direct plagiarism.

Week 5- The Adventures of Art (Or lack thereof)

If you've read anything I've done in this class so far, you probably have heard me go on about how I am not an artist. And I stand by that point, I can not draw, paint, sketch, or whatever verb you can come up with a picture or anything. It's weird considering my Mom draws with colored pencils for a living, but obviously none of that talent was bestowed on to me. No, I get to toil around drawing stick figures for the rest of time, woe is me.

Combine that with the fact that I only got myself a iPhone (or any variant of a smartphone) around two weeks ago, and I can say I haven't done any sort of art on The Cloud.

Of course, that can change depending on your definition of art.

While I do not draw anything, I do sometimes write. It's never anything professional or super profound, but I have written small pieces on the internet. Heck, in one case I accidentally started a giant continuity for a community because I got bored and decided to write.

For the last week I've been watching a streaming site called Twitch attempt to play a simple game of Pokemon Red. With 80,000 people playing, it's been taking a while, but due to the chaotic nature of everything, a lot of injokes have sprouted up. And just last night, I wrote a small humorous piece on the reaction of one character to seeing all the madness going on around him. It was short, but I do end up writing things here and there. And I'm being told it's generally well written (Even if I make a stupid grammatical mistake because I wrote it at 11:45 PM...) so when it comes to writing, that has escaped out onto the Cloud in some ways.

As for our third category, photography. This is something I just can't get into, which is weird because, once again, my mom has taken it up in the last 6 years and is pretty good at what she does. Even though I have the iPhone now, I won't start taking a ton of pictures. As I said before, I do make videos, but that seems to be a totally different realm entirely.

To sum it up, my experience with art really comes down to writing (and music but hey, that is a different area) and not much else. I can't say for sure, but that's just the way it is.

Week 4- Creative Commons

The whole idea of Creative Commons feels like a relief of sorts when we go back and think about all the things concerning copyright we previously talked about.

The simple fact that there are simpler alternatives to the never-ending struggle that is copyright laws is always a nice thing to see. The copyright laws are so confusing on their own that this is a saving grace of sorts for us. It's also incredibly helpful that there are a wide variety of options that are all thoroughly explained, so trying to figure out what you're allowed to use and what you're not allowed to use is made slightly easier.

I do agree when the article states that creative commons helps expose whatever it is that is copyrighted to the public. After all, if you make something that other people have permission to use, generally it's going to get more attention than things that don't have any use at all. So what really matters is that Creative Commons is helpful for not only the consumer, as it is helpful to the artist as well. All in all, everyone wins! So that's pretty great.

Overall, Creative Commons just makes the copyright law a little easier to deal with, and considering how confusing it can be in the first place, it's a welcome change.

Multimedia Week Three

It sure is a weird feeling having someone tell you that the internet is only 5000 days old (Well, a little more at this given time, but my point still stands) because it feels like it's been so much longer than that. Kevin Kelly's talk about the next 5000 days in the lifespan of the internet was really an interesting one. It's clear that this guy knows what he's talking about, and even though it was made back in 2007, some points still stand.

I think what I found to be the most interesting from his video was the talk of how everything will eventually be part of the web. It sounds like such an unnerving topic when it's worded like that. It's some horror movie where the internet slowly assimilates everything in the world. Not a super fun topic. Of course, that's just crazy talk on my end. The actual claims were a lot more tame and all jokes aside, it sounds incredibly likely that in the next couple of years, everything will be more and more attached to the web. The quote I found the most interesting was saying that the web is like a black hole. And he is absolutely right. If you look around more and more at everything, you'll probably notice that more things are somehow connected to the internet. Some more than others. It could be something as simple as a nearby company advertising it's Facebook page, or something bigger like a new product that is connected online for whatever reason. As time passes, more and more things will be brought to the web.

Seriously though, the way it's worded here makes it sound a lot more negative than it could be. There are always consequences to connecting more things to the internet, but generally there are good things to come out of it too. It's really hard for me to say right now if it's a positive or negative thing, but I guess we'll just have to find out during the next 5000 days. And hope we don't all die or something by some internet apocalypse in the meantime.

Multimedia Week 2: The Cloud

It sounds rather ominous when it's worded that simply...

Let's talk about The Cloud shall we? I won't tiptoe around the fact that I am something of a nerd when it comes to things on the internet. I usually end up being glued to a screen more so than anything else. But what's really interesting is even though I'm on the computer so often, there are a lot of aspects to The Cloud that most people use, and yet I simply do not.

While I do have a Facebook account, it's rare that you'll actually see me doing anything on it. At most I post a link to a video I've made on Youtube. And unlike Facebook, Youtube plays much more of a factor in the "things I do on The Cloud". When it comes to image saving, I mostly only do it for small games I make (text based games in case you're wondering, so no technology there) if I need a picture to show something off or something, and in that case I just use Imgur as it's been the most reliable for me. My email has fallen into the same disregarded boat as Facebook, in which I check it sometimes, but I really don't do anything with it. I do have Open Office however, and that's where I type all my essays for school and the such.

Five years ago was rather different, but at the same time, not by a whole lot. Basically, all you'd have to do to get the internet for me five years ago would be take away Facebook, take away Open Office, take away my email and replace a couple nondescript websites with a few others. I was still on Youtube, I just wasn't making any videos. While I think back on it, it feels as if technology has improved a lot over the past 5 years, but I tend to ignore the advancements such as Facebook and Twitter and just keep going with the things I know. I wonder why that is...



It's really hard to say what the future has in store. It's a little worrying to be honest, whether it'll be even more impossible to remain private on the Internet, or Google updating Youtube again to make it even more inaccessible (That's a rant for another day though) I find it hard to look super brightly for things to come. It seems we have hit almost all the bases when it comes to things we can do thanks to The Cloud. We can make music, make videos, make art, chat with friends, type up entire reports, the list goes on. All that remains is to see how the current methods of doing all of these things can be improved upon in the future, though it could be for better or for worse.

An Opening Week

Also known as: "How Dmitri is going to have trouble coming up with titles for these things..."


Hello everyone! Welcome to this blog! I won't hesitate to admit that I never do anything involving blogs, so this is pretty new. I'm just not the guy who tends to read blogs, let alone create one. Though I'm sure it won't be the end of the world to make one for this class. Because if I don't I'll probably fail.

Anyhow, when it comes to a class called "Multimedia Apps and Tools", I wasn't quite sure what to expect from it, besides the fact that it's going to have a lot to do with media. And now that I have a more basic understanding, I'm hoping to learn a lot of neat little things I wouldn't have been able to learn otherwise either because I would have never had the chance or I'm simply too lazy. That's not I'm not familiar with everything on the outline, but there's still a lot I don't know that I'm interested in.

...I am a bit worried about the animation week, as I have the art skills of a rock. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there I suppose.

When it comes to online classes, this isn't the first one I've taken, but it is the first one I've taken on Moodle. While it's a bit different, getting used to it isn't that difficult. Plus, because of the system I've used to get into this class, I get a full period in my school day for this online course. So that's pretty dandy.

Anyway, this is just a little intro post to this blog, and next time I'll talk about whatever the assignment tells me to! Until then!