RSS feeds are a part of my everyday life(and that's one of the reasons why I feel these exercises are pointless for me, but that's not a topic for this post). I have my iGoogle homepage set up to display a good 6 or 7 feeds as soon as I load up Firefox or hit my home button. I use them to follow my webcomics, server status of various sites, hosts and games, and my Hulu queue (http://www.hulu.com/).
Anyway, RSS is good and simple and shouldnt require a whole lesson to learn about.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
YouTube
YouTube comes in handy pretty often. I use it to catch episodes of TV shows that aren't shown as much over here, mostly shows from the BBC that I'd have to wait months to see here like Doctor Who. Yeah they're on there illegally, but that doesn't bother me at all.
Plus I've used YouTube to host videos. 3 years ago or so my friends and I were part of an online scavenger hunt that used YouTube as a main host for all the videos from the various teams across the world. Luckily I don't think the videos are on there anymore.
So yeah, YouTube is good. Just please don't upload anything on there because unless its for a specific purpose, chances are nobody really wants to see it anyway. Oh, and also stay away from the comment section on any popular video. They're considered by many to be one of the cesspools of the Internet.
Edit: Apparently I'm supposed to embed a video too. So here it is:
Plus I've used YouTube to host videos. 3 years ago or so my friends and I were part of an online scavenger hunt that used YouTube as a main host for all the videos from the various teams across the world. Luckily I don't think the videos are on there anymore.
So yeah, YouTube is good. Just please don't upload anything on there because unless its for a specific purpose, chances are nobody really wants to see it anyway. Oh, and also stay away from the comment section on any popular video. They're considered by many to be one of the cesspools of the Internet.
Edit: Apparently I'm supposed to embed a video too. So here it is:
Myspace and Facebook
I checked them out. I used to have one of each but deleted them. Myspace is slowly dying now and I didn't like Facebook enough to want to switch over to it.
I looked at the Facebook page, but didn't fan it or anything since I don't have an account there anymore and even when I did try it out a year ago it didn't have anything special that made me want to come back to it.
I had a Myspace for about 4 or 5 years and was a heavy user, so I think I know pretty much all about it. There's nothing too special about it, its actually a pretty average social site by today's standards. The only thing I miss about it was the free music streaming, but that's what sites like Pandora are for.
I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to write here about it, so I'm just going to say that this is good enough.
I looked at the Facebook page, but didn't fan it or anything since I don't have an account there anymore and even when I did try it out a year ago it didn't have anything special that made me want to come back to it.
I had a Myspace for about 4 or 5 years and was a heavy user, so I think I know pretty much all about it. There's nothing too special about it, its actually a pretty average social site by today's standards. The only thing I miss about it was the free music streaming, but that's what sites like Pandora are for.
I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to write here about it, so I'm just going to say that this is good enough.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Feel Free To Send This Around To Everyone
I tweeted this message from our account today:
"Twitter can be fun. Shaq is on here (@THE_REAL_SHAQ), and so is Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself). Celebrities tend to get personal with fans here"
I feel that this is a subject that should have definitely been brought up when we were introduced as a whole to Twitter. Lots of celebrities have personal twitter accounts which they use to chat with fans. Here's just some that I know of personally, and have even talked to a few of them which I never would have if it wasn't for Twitter. Actually, I don't know a single person on my twitter "friends list" personally, yet I still use it every day and have a great time talking to and joking around with some relatively famous people sometimes.
From TV:
Rainn Wilson from The Office (http://twitter.com/rainnwilson)
Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (http://twitter.com/StephenColbert) [He's not so active anymore, but you never know if he'll be back]
Will Wheaton of Star Trek infamy [And all around good geeky guy] (http://twitter.com/wilw)
Greg Grunberg from Heroes (http://twitter.com/greggrunberg)
Brea Grant from [also from] Heroes (http://twitter.com/breagrant)
Joel McHale, host of The Soup on E (http://twitter.com/joelmchale)
Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol (http://twitter.com/ryanseacrest)
William Shatner (http://twitter.com/WilliamShatner)
Bands and Music:
The band Jimmy Eat World tweets all the time, sometimes even while they're preforming. They've asked via Twitter for feedback and even song requests mid concert (http://twitter.com/jimmyeatworld)
Coling Meloy, the lead of the band The Decemberists also tweets. Actually because of twitter, I just found out that they have a new album out (http://twitter.com/colinmeloy)
Coldplay (http://twitter.com/coldplay)
Plus plenty more that I probably just haven't found yet.
More and more people as well as celebrities are realizing the benefits of having an instantaneous way to reach "the masses." Like this past weekend when Shaquille O'Neal was bored so he sat outside in public and tweeted that the first person to come to him from Twitter would get a prize. Within minutes, he sent out another tweet to tell everybody that he had a winner and then he spent some time hanging out with the group of fans and followers that had come to find him.
Some schools use Twitter to relay messages (like the law schools listed here: http://socialmedialawstudent.com/twitter/how-law-schools-are-using-twitter/), as do some Police Precincts. It was also used back in 2007 to quickly spread information and warnings about the Californian wildfires (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/firsthand-repor.html).
Now there is also TwitPic (http://twitpic.com/), a service used to send a quick link for an image to your Twitter timeline. You can take a picture, and within seconds everybody who's following you can actually see what you're doing. It might not seem like you'd have many uses for it, but there are plenty. And again, some celebs are very fond of using this service to send out behind the scenes pictures or sneak peeks.
I'm sure many people think there's no point to Twitter, and I know I've heard plenty of people say "What do I care what you're doing?" or "Who cares if you're going to the bathroom, why are you telling me?" And honestly, I agree with those people. Twitter prompts you with the question: "what are you doing right now?" but that definitely doesn't mean you have to answer that question for every little thing you do. You don't have to ever send a tweet yourself, or even talk to anyone on Twitter. Sometimes just following people can be entertaining enough. Some people link informative news posts, entertaining videos, and sometimes even behind the scenes information and pictures from TV shows and movies. Just a fair warning though: unlike on television, the Internet isn't usually censored. But in my experience, not many twittering celebrities have extremely dirty mouths.
So if you didn't think you would like it, give it another try. And this time you don't have to make it personal. You might think "Who cares what I'm doing?" and you know what, you're probably right (no offense of course), but theres plenty of interesting people out there, and you never know what you can learn in just 140 characters or less.
"Twitter can be fun. Shaq is on here (@THE_REAL_SHAQ), and so is Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself). Celebrities tend to get personal with fans here"
I feel that this is a subject that should have definitely been brought up when we were introduced as a whole to Twitter. Lots of celebrities have personal twitter accounts which they use to chat with fans. Here's just some that I know of personally, and have even talked to a few of them which I never would have if it wasn't for Twitter. Actually, I don't know a single person on my twitter "friends list" personally, yet I still use it every day and have a great time talking to and joking around with some relatively famous people sometimes.
From TV:
Rainn Wilson from The Office (http://twitter.com/rainnwilson)
Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (http://twitter.com/StephenColbert) [He's not so active anymore, but you never know if he'll be back]
Will Wheaton of Star Trek infamy [And all around good geeky guy] (http://twitter.com/wilw)
Greg Grunberg from Heroes (http://twitter.com/greggrunberg)
Brea Grant from [also from] Heroes (http://twitter.com/breagrant)
Joel McHale, host of The Soup on E (http://twitter.com/joelmchale)
Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol (http://twitter.com/ryanseacrest)
William Shatner (http://twitter.com/WilliamShatner)
Bands and Music:
The band Jimmy Eat World tweets all the time, sometimes even while they're preforming. They've asked via Twitter for feedback and even song requests mid concert (http://twitter.com/jimmyeatworld)
Coling Meloy, the lead of the band The Decemberists also tweets. Actually because of twitter, I just found out that they have a new album out (http://twitter.com/colinmeloy)
Coldplay (http://twitter.com/coldplay)
Plus plenty more that I probably just haven't found yet.
More and more people as well as celebrities are realizing the benefits of having an instantaneous way to reach "the masses." Like this past weekend when Shaquille O'Neal was bored so he sat outside in public and tweeted that the first person to come to him from Twitter would get a prize. Within minutes, he sent out another tweet to tell everybody that he had a winner and then he spent some time hanging out with the group of fans and followers that had come to find him.
Some schools use Twitter to relay messages (like the law schools listed here: http://socialmedialawstudent.com/twitter/how-law-schools-are-using-twitter/), as do some Police Precincts. It was also used back in 2007 to quickly spread information and warnings about the Californian wildfires (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/firsthand-repor.html).
Now there is also TwitPic (http://twitpic.com/), a service used to send a quick link for an image to your Twitter timeline. You can take a picture, and within seconds everybody who's following you can actually see what you're doing. It might not seem like you'd have many uses for it, but there are plenty. And again, some celebs are very fond of using this service to send out behind the scenes pictures or sneak peeks.
I'm sure many people think there's no point to Twitter, and I know I've heard plenty of people say "What do I care what you're doing?" or "Who cares if you're going to the bathroom, why are you telling me?" And honestly, I agree with those people. Twitter prompts you with the question: "what are you doing right now?" but that definitely doesn't mean you have to answer that question for every little thing you do. You don't have to ever send a tweet yourself, or even talk to anyone on Twitter. Sometimes just following people can be entertaining enough. Some people link informative news posts, entertaining videos, and sometimes even behind the scenes information and pictures from TV shows and movies. Just a fair warning though: unlike on television, the Internet isn't usually censored. But in my experience, not many twittering celebrities have extremely dirty mouths.
So if you didn't think you would like it, give it another try. And this time you don't have to make it personal. You might think "Who cares what I'm doing?" and you know what, you're probably right (no offense of course), but theres plenty of interesting people out there, and you never know what you can learn in just 140 characters or less.
Ok I started this, is that good enough?
Honestly, the web 2.0 presentation bored me to no end. Being a young adult who has spent most of my life with internet access available and who basically lives on the internet, I have used nearly everything we "learned" about during the presentation by now. In some instances Beth wasnt even fully informed on what some of the services she talked about are capable of doing, and she definitely missed out on plenty of topics she could have brought up to make things seem more interesting to more people (namely the plenty of more entertaining uses for Twitter, and how blogs are slowly replacing newspapers as a major form of news delivery). She seemed more like someone who just learned about this stuff and thought it was so cool she had to tell everyone what little she knows about it, rather than an expert who should be doing presentations on the topic. She struck all the wrong notes with me as Im sure anyone who was sitting around me could tell from my constant eye-rolling.
I'm also fairly opposed to this whole "Web 2.0" thing being mandatory. It seems like just a collosal waste of time for me since I now have to go so far as to create new accounts for some of these services because I deleted the ones that I’ve used for years in the past and no longer needed/used them (sites like Myspace and Facebook specifically). Now I have to waste time doing this just because I have to and Id like to be able to wear jeans to work for a couple of days, instead of the work that is starting to pile up on my desk in preparation for the summer.
I know for a fact that everything I create for this program will never be touched by me again, and I will have learned next to nothing new about any of the topics in this program because I have already known about them for years in some cases. Overall this gets a huuuge thumbs down from me, and Im very dissapointed that I have to do it.
I'm also fairly opposed to this whole "Web 2.0" thing being mandatory. It seems like just a collosal waste of time for me since I now have to go so far as to create new accounts for some of these services because I deleted the ones that I’ve used for years in the past and no longer needed/used them (sites like Myspace and Facebook specifically). Now I have to waste time doing this just because I have to and Id like to be able to wear jeans to work for a couple of days, instead of the work that is starting to pile up on my desk in preparation for the summer.
I know for a fact that everything I create for this program will never be touched by me again, and I will have learned next to nothing new about any of the topics in this program because I have already known about them for years in some cases. Overall this gets a huuuge thumbs down from me, and Im very dissapointed that I have to do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)