Assignment

I enjoyed the conversation in our class last night and I appreciate Ryan giving his presentation on generational differences in Hong Kong and how media has played a role.

I would like everyone to add comments on the blog on how new media has changed your own and the lives of your family, co-workers, and friends in the last 2-3 years. You might want to consider
some of the new ways you communicate to each of these groups.

Also, I would love to see all of you post a link to an article, blog, video clip or commentary that illustrates this. It could be about either news or entertainment.

Then you might want to find images of people communicated in new or traditional ways to illustrate you point. These images could be used next week in the class assignment with Ravi.

Tsunami coverage

Video footage from American Samoa of the tsunami as captured by a local radio reporter:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8282882.stm

More immediate images/video from this than the 2004 tsunami.

class tonight

The class this evening will consist of 2 parts:

The lecture and practice time in the lab.

See you in awhile.

AMG

September 22, 2009 lesson chalkboard

September 22, 2009 lesson chalkboard
Originally uploaded by ravijain

Here's the state of our classroom's chalkboard before we alit to the lab last week. I'll transcribe this list so we can prioritize.

Techies in Politics

There was a post that caught my eye yesterday by Linda Hall on the CNN political blog titled "Can tech personalities break into politics?" The article was about the former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and her move into politics. Hall's post mentions the career changes of former actors, a former astronaut and former athletes who were able to effectively use their high profiles as a means of breaking into political careers. Hall puts forth the idea that if actors, astronauts and athletes can transition into politics, then can tech geeks successfully do the same?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

As I was reading and reflecting on the post, I mentally fast forwarded into the future to imagine the changes that could be brought to bear on the politics of this country if even one of the two most well known techies, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were to enter politics. One such change that might come into being is in gaining and engaging the attention of the voting population. Imagine if they were to be vying for the office of President of the United States. Would either of them really need the support of either of the existing political parties or would they have the ability and the vision to start their own party?

http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview/

In the past, attempts to start new parties have been thwarted by old line political and media gatekeepers, but imagine if an emerging party were able to capitalize on the most advanced aspects of the new media and the ability to enhance and even create those advanced aspects of these new media channels of communication.

Second Life/Second Wife?

I wanted to follow up on the Second Life discussion that arose while we were brainstorming the various digital communication tools. I had a vague memory of an article from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that chronicled a woman who had accused her husband of cheating...with an avatar from Second Life. The original WSJ article, provocatively titled "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?" outlined the growing conundrum such virtual realities pose, as they specifically raise new questions about what it means to be faithful in this digital day.

As a further update to this story, good old Hollywood seemed to waste no time in seizing on this fodder and as reported in a 2008 W.I.R.E.D article, Universal Pictures has apparently teamed up with a famous director to make the content of the original WSJ article a "reality."

hi everyone

I am not sure that this is my first time dealing with blog or not. However, I have one blog which is very interesting about my country,Thailand. It is a blog that people can show any kind of topic.

http://www.thai-blogs.com/index.php/2009/07/14/old-town-in-chanthaburi?blog=5

RAVI UPDATE

Just leaving to come to class -- may be 10 minutes late.

Don't leave! :-)

A couple of blogs

Thought I'd throw out a couple of blogs.

One is one of the first blogs I ever looked at (before I really knew what a blog was) -- written by a friend and a prominent blogger, Steve Garfield. His blog is called Off On A Tangent and can be found at http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/



Another one that I look at is Universal Hub -- stories in and around Boston that might not make it onto Boston.com ( http://www.universalhub.com/ )

Blogs I usually go

Hello Everyone,

I would like to share one of the blogs I go at my free time. It is a show from BBC named Top Gear. It is a show about cars that they would do reviews and make some challenges in driving or doing some engineering staffs. The link is http://www.topgear.com/uk/blogs you can also see other blogs of the other shows in BBC.

Another blog I would like to Share is a discussion blogs from Hong Kong named Uwants. It is a blog that people can post all kind of topics such as news, work, live etc etc... Unfortunately, it only shows Chinese so you would need to know Chinese in order to read the blog. The link is http://www3.uwants.com/ then you can click any topic in the website. You would see people would leave messages regarding the topic and it is interesting to see how different react to news, live or work.

A Whole New Communication Arena For Me

While I have made a comment on one of the blog postings of the class blog, this is my first posting and it is actually my first time dealing with a blog. Of course I see them all the time when I am browsing the net, but I really have not had much interest in them. This week I have explored some and I found a couple of blogs that I thought were interesting. One was the CNN political blog. I usually do not pay much attention to a lot of the stuff that is being spoken of on CNN, I do read the crawl to see if there is a topic of interest on the political, financial or international arena that I want to follow up on. I have found that the CNN Political Ticker blog is an excellent extension of the televised crawl.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Another blog that I have found interesting for looking at commentary on international and security affairs is the blog on Center for Security Policy web site.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/blog.xml

I will be looking forward to working more with this "blogging thing" and seeing to it that it gets as easy as shooting off an email or producing a word document.

Iraqi Bloggers

Hi everyone!
I thought to share with you those two blogs, because they were the first two blogs posted by two Iraqis, in English.


http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Blogs I Follow

The blogs I follow daily are mostly about technology and innovations. Two blogs I regularly check are:

These include latest news about new computers, cell phones, iPhones & Blackberry news.

Other blogs I check about twice a week are about music and fun posts. They are both from Turkey:

http://postalar.blogspot.com/

http://exclusivehitmusic.blogspot.com/

For political and international news I get updates on my Blackberry so I don't actually follow blogs for that. Mobile communication devices seem to be killing computers at an increasing rate each day.

Blogs I Have Known

I read two blogs frequently.
Stanley Fish in the NYTimes - "Think Again".
Fish is a professor (we are soul brothers) who writes about the state of education and university life. He recently blogged about "what colleges should teach" and lo and behold he suggested writing....what a marvelous idea!

The other blog that read as often as I can is anything by Robert Kaplan who frequently writes in The Atlantic. Although Kaplan he is a conservative writer his world view is astonishing. He has written about such diverse topics as the developing culture of the American Southwest to the continuing trading that takes place on the Ancient Silk Road of Central Asia. A writer not afraid of his words!

JOS

Blogs I like

Hi everybody,

Here are some of the blogs I like to follow;

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

(They even published a book with the same title.)

http://www.funnyordie.com/

These blogs always make me laugh.

http://mademistakes.com/

I found this one yesterday but it seems like a fine one.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

If you guys know another good news blog I really like to know.

Thank you!!

Internet Harassments

In today's world, using the internet becomes part of out life. We would go online to chart with friends, do banking and shopping. We also have the opporunity to learn things from other cultures or people. In a work place, the internet provide the convenience that people can process their work or communicating wiht other businesses more efficent and effective. It also help businesses to expand its operation globaly. Some say the internet is the new age of Globalizaiton and the future of the world will base on the developemnt of the internet. However, some say although we are enjoyin the accomplishment of the internet, however, new problems have coem up and people are spending more time to handle it. This means the internet does not really convenien our live at all.

One of the problem is e-mail spamming. When we open our e-mail box in the morning, we would see there has tons of junk mails that wasted the capacity of our e-mail box. We would spend some of our working time to read and delet the junk mails. Sometimes when we open a junk mail, we might have the risk in getting computer virus. This is anohter problem in using the internet that there have thousands of computer viruses that would release personal information from our computer to the public. On the other hand, when we are viewing some public blogs online, we wwould see some people would make unethical comment to somebody's post. IT is hard for people to know who make that kind of comment. It is becasue people would make thier own user name instead of their real name. As a result, they can say anything they want wiht out considering other's feeling.

Maintaining Privacy

You can select any kind of display name with Blogger in order to manage your privacy. Once you've logged in to Blogger and you are in your Dashboard, select "Edit Profile" to change these settings (including hiding your email address and other options).

Assignment for 9/22

1. Accept email invitation to join the class blog.

2. Log into the class blog and make an original post in which you share a blog with the class (something that hasn't been posted yet and/or something we may not have heard of). Be prepared to talk about the blog in class.

Weekly Question #1 - Revisited and Retitled: WEDded to the Web

Hi all,

I just wanted to share one of the wedding blogs that I was "glued" to for the better part of this past year: http://www.stylemepretty.com/

While the Internet is saturated with wedding related sites, the visual learner (and recent bride) in me found the photos on this particular blog very helpful!

On a separate note, while stuck in the airport on Thursday, I saw a cartoon in USA TODAY that was both humorous and very relevant to our class! If you are an online member (free), you can view it by following this link http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/ and then clicking on the separate link to the editorial cartoons. If not, I clipped it out (old media style) and can bring it to class this Tuesday.

New Beginnings Old Endings

New academic year....meet new students, new classmates, new instructors; leave old ideas behind. Question still in my mind about the "new model" of education - E-ed. Have dealt with E-commerce, networks, virtual stuff! Unsure if E-ed is the future or a marketing idea whose time will be short.

Tell Me!


Jos

09/15 Handout

[This is an online version of the handouts you received]

GETTING STARTED WITH THE CLASS BLOG

• We have a class blog at:
http://gst6420-fall2009.blogspot.com/

• To contribute to the class blog, you need to have a Google or Gmail account. If you don’t have one, you can get one at gmail.com

• You will receive an email invitation to join the class blog. This email invitation is a notification email – I will not get any replies if you hit “REPLY” to this email. If you don’t receive the invitation within the next 24 hours, email me at ravi@ravijain.org

• Once you have a Gmail account and have accepted the class blog, you can log in at anytime at blogger.com Once you are logged in, you will see the “Dashboard” which will show any blogs that you can contribute to. If you’ve just gotten started with blogger, you will only see our class blog.

• From the Dashboard you can create “New Posts” or edit any posts you’ve saved (but not published). You can comment on any other posts from the class blog itself.

• I have noticed inconsistencies with browsers, so I recommend Firefox for blogging.

• We will go over how to create links, add images, tags, and more, so don’t worry if it seems confusing and/or overwhelming. There are very good resources at http://www.google.com/support/blogger/

Class blog

This is the class blog for GST 6420, Global Focus: Media and Communication Technology (Fall 2009), taught by Ann Galligan and Ravi Jain.