Sudden Fury

In this post I'd like to pay tribute to a database that has served me well whenever I've desired knowledge about film and t.v. I am ofcourse talking about IMDb. In order to demonstrate why this site is superior to anything else (that i know of at least) I will describe my most recent use for the site.

As I approached my final New Media Frontiers class, naturally, I wanted to make my last graded post a good one :) Struggling to find anything promising in my google search entitled "new technologies," I decided to visit the website of my teacher, Leslie Walker, hoping to find something new and exciting there. As I read through her glowing bio, I learned that she had written a book, "Sudden Fury," a New York Times best seller. As if that weren't cool enough, the book had been made into a t.v. movie which aired in 1993!

Cover of Sudden Fury

My first instinct was to search "Sudden Fury" into IMDb. Sure enough a page with the heading "A Family Torn Apart"-aka Sudden Fury, displayed across my screen. Though other sites on google contained some knowledge about "Sudden Fury," the extent of information paled in comparison to that given on IMDb. Unlike most other sites which merely provided the star of the movie, Neil Patrick Harris, IMDb provided a list of the fifteen characters who had played a significant role in the film, each with a link to the bio of the actor, including all the filmography each had been a part of during their career.

What I love about this site is that unlike other sites which provide only pieces of what make up the entire puzzle of everything related to a movie or t.v. show, IMDb provides practically all there is to know. Whether it be the release date, exact length of the film, the awards it has won, quotes from the movie, cast, etc. IMDb is sure to have it! This suggests that in order for a site to survive as long as IMDB (almost twenty years now,) it must provide as much information about a topic as possible, users desiring to get the majority of information on a topic in one place.

Friend Blaster!

Anyone in a band who is struggling to build a fan base needs to start using Friend Blaster, a stellar program created specifically for myspace. Before I explain the function of this program, it is important to understand the power of myspace to effectively build a following.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In 2003 when myspace was first launched, many bands saw the potential to spread their music by reaching out to the growing number of online users. Lily Allen, singer songwriter from the UK, did this better than anyone, becoming one of the first musicians to gain unprecedented fame through myspace. By posting demos of her songs on myspace, and responding to the comments of fans on her page, in no time she gained hundreds of thousands of friends on her site.

Today record labels continue to look at the amount of interaction bands have with their fans as well as the number of friends on their profiles as a means of judging if a band is worth their investment. That's where Friend blaster comes in. This brand new program gathers the profiles of up to five hundred friends a day, and allows you to send, along with a personal message of your choice, friend requests to each profile. Before this program was created bands were forced to go through time consuming process of friending each profile one at a time. With Friend Blaster, those days are history!

Another great feature of friend blaster is that it allows you to target the group of profiles you send friend requests to. Pop rock bands trying to build a fan base in the D.C. area, for example, would use friend blaster to gather the profiles of friends of popular pop rock bands in the D.C. area. My band, Trustfall, has used Friend Blaster to gather profiles of fans of local, popular rock band Hotspur. Since using Friend blaster, the hits on our page have trippled, along with the number of comments we recieve!

Finally, though Friend blaster gets the job done when it comes to friending potential fans, that's only half the battle. In order to make believers out of your new friends, you must let them know that you care about them and appreciate their support. Responding to the comments of your new friends on myspace demonstrates that you want to get to know them on a personal level, and aren't only concerned with selling them your merchandice.

The comfort of online graveyards

In class we tackled the question, Do we seek digital immortality? Whether it be through our blogs, facebook accounts, or sites we have created, many are driven to create these sites with “digital immortality” as a major incentive. However, recently people have used sites like facebook and myspace to preserve the memory of not only themselves but of loved ones that have passed on.

One way sites like myspace and facebook have been used to immortalize the deceased can be seen in the continual posting of comments on the profiles of those who have died. A few years back a friend of mine, Jamie Kellerman, who also happened to be an avid myspace user, was killed in a car crash. On her myspace page, friends posted thousands of comments addressed directly to her, as if she would continue to check her page. Though over the years many of her friends have stopped writing on her page, occasionally a family member or close friend will write to Jamie, reminding her how much she is missed. One person who never ceased to write on jamie’s page was her mother, posting once a month since her death . Some criticize this, believing that profile pages prohibit loved ones from ever moving on, creating the illusion that the dead live on throught their profile pages. I disagree. As we all know losing a loved one is tough, and no one can tell you the correct way to deal with loss. Thefefore, if one finds comfort posting comments on the profile page of a loved one who has died, so be it!

It's strange how sites take on unprecedented roles. The creators of myspace and facebook had no idea that their sites would create a unique, widely accepted way of coping with death. While nothing stopped people in the past from writing letters directly to the deceased, profile pages have caused a dramatic increase in this practice for many reasons. For one, many decided against writing to loved one’s simply because they had nowhere to send these letter to. Today, profile pages provide an outlet for writing to loved ones.

There’s no doubt that sites like facebook and myspace are powerful new means of coping with death. One of the greatest comforts one can have when dealing with the death of a loved one is knowing that the deceased was loved and cared for by many during their life. It’s no wonder why Jamie’s mother continues to post on her daughter’s profile, struggling to let go of the same profile flooded by thousands of heartwarming comments expressing love for her daughter after her death.

Why Twitter is the Cat's Pajamas

Image via CrunchBase

When I first heard about twitter, and the rapid growth of its users, I failed to see what the hype was all about. The fact that twitter limited its users' posts to under one hundred forty characters seemed to contradict the very purpose of the digital world. Why put a limit on the amount of words one could post? Hadn't the purpose of transforming words on a page to bits been to allow users to write as much as they wanted, no longer constricted by the limitations of the physical world? Struggling to understand why twitter had become so enormously popular in recent months, I pooled my knowledge together to come up with the reason why twitter is loved by so many.

In my New Media Frontiers Class, my classmates and I have discussed how the digital age has transformed the current generation’s desires, thoughts, and overall perspective on life. Because new technologies have made all sorts of knowledge and activities available on the web with unprecedented speed, most people have developed a short attention span. Like kids at a candy store, users on the internet are attracted to everything. Rather than spending time on one particular topic, users are restless, constantly looking for something new and exciting that requires little time.

Twitter, with it's short updates, caters to the new generation of users who want a quick fix. As the Internet has made all knowledge more accessible and faster to obtain, our desire to know what everyone is up to in the shortest amount of time possible has increased dramatically. As a result a short recap of one’s thoughts in fewer than one hundred and forty characters is just what the new generation of users desires.

The exponential growth of twitter over the last few months can be attributed to what the digital age has been accomplishing ever since its birth decades ago. As new technologies continue to make knowledge more accessible, our attention spans will grow smaller, thus making sites like twitter more attractive, forcing it's users to provide simple, quick updates. One might ask whether our growing desire for a "quick fix," with sites like twitter, will prevent us from appreciating what takes time?

Taking Control of our Privacy

When most people think of technology and how it's developed in recent years, they think of the incredible benifits it has brought to society. However, I believe it is just as important for people to understand the downsides that many of these technologies have created, specifically the invasion of privacy. Robert O Harrow, author of "No Place to Hide" and prominant writer for the Washington Post, Skyped my class a few days ago. Having spent the last twenty years researching how new technologies have destroyed our sense of privacy that existed before the technological boom, he strongly encouraged us to be aware of the ways new technology formats have allowed for our invasion of privacy on a whole new level.

The fact that many of us are not aware of the ways companies, the government and other agendas use new technologies as a ways of gathering information about our lives that intrudes our privacy makes is disturbing. Though I don't see a problem when one willingly chooses to express private issues on sites like facebook, I am deeply concerned when ones privacy is intruded upon without any warning.

A perfect example of this is can be seen through the use of an EZ pass. Millions of Americans have bought an EZ pass in order to cruise by others through toll stations on highways. What they don't know is that everytime the light flashes green and allows them to pass, a record is kept of the exact date and time they went through that toll, creating a digital record of where they have travaelled. Finally, this driving record can be retrieved and used in court! Though in some cases this record can be benificial, I'm willing to bet that most EZpass users would be shocked to learn of this, and many would reconsider their decision to use the pass altogether.

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

Critics argue the reason why people are unaware of this "invasion of privacy" is because of ignorance. I argue that this is precisely why companies should not be allowed to exploit inexperienced users of new technology. Ignorance of the consumer does not in any way justify the exploitation of ones privacy; therefore, companies must be required to clearly lay out what data is being kept and whom it is being shared with until people become more accustomed to how technologies effect ones privacy. However, because it is highly unlikely for companies to inform the public of its questionable practices, especially with no laws in place regulating them, I suggest that those who are aware of the way technologies invade our pricacy make it a priority to inform friends and family of this as well. With the "benifit" of the ever growing web of communication facilitated by the Internet, informing others of this shouldn't be that difficult.

At the Apple Store Size DOES Matter

When the new ipod shuffle hit stores, though I was intrigued by the new "talk feature" of the ipod, what I found most interesting was apple's approach to advertising its new product. On the front page of apple.com an advertisement entitled, "small talk," boasts that the "iPod shuffle is jaw-droppingly small... half the size of the previous generation." When clicking on the tutorial video, a young woman goes on an on about the new shuffle being "the world’s smallest music player…even smaller than a double a battery" before finally going on to the new functions of the ipod.

When I clicked off the ad, I had a good laugh, pondering what it was about smaller physical mediums for technology that are so appealing to the consumer? Though I was genuinely impressed by the sheer feat of cramming 4GB of memory into such an incredibly small object, I couldn’t see much practical use to having that small of a machine. For one, I can't imagine trying to relocate the new shuffle if, God forbid, I misplaced the object not much larger than a paper clip. Also, an ipod that small would certainly be much more breakable than ipods in the past. As I thought about all of the disadvantages of the new ipod, I was beginning to feel like an elerly person complaining about the impracticality of new technology, everything about it being too small, whether that be the buttons, screen, etc.

Finally, I asked myself the question that often comes up when considering new technology. At what point are the creators of the product going to stop? Will apple continue to make ipods until they are no longer visible to the naked eye? At this rate, I don't see why not.

The future of Internet Advertising!

It’s common knowledge that most Internet sites make their money off of advertisements. However, I wondered why anyone would ever click on the annoying, flashing advertisements that I’m so accustomed to ignoring. Convinced that I must be missing something, I sought out to discover the reason why the main source of revenue from sites came from advertisement. I found the answer I was looking in the New York Times.

It turns out most people were ignoring the flashy advertisements just as I had. However, the same way smart companies have allowed and encouraged costumers to actively participate in the process of developing improved products, advertisements have begun to do the same. New “interactive ads” are presented to a computer user in a way that allows him to actively participate in the product. Thinking back to where I might have seen this before, I realized that I had been suckered into participating in an “interactive advertisements” only a few months ago while visiting my favorite site, collegehumor.

One of the best segments on the site, along with “prank wars” which surprising came to umd for the incredible halfcourt prank, is the “Gotta Go in a Minute Show.” After every show, a silly twenty second clip promoting mountain dew’s new flavor of soft drink would air. In these ads, each flavor of soft drink would playfully argue with one another over who tasted the best, until finally a voice would shout “you decide!” and give the link to vote for the newest flavor. The fact that I had been given the option to participate compelled me to click the link and cast my vote. Needless to say, when the product came out which also happened to be the same one I voted for, I was eager to try the new product I had chosen.

Because I felt I had been a part of choosing the newest soft drink offered by mountain dew, I was already a fan of the product. Smart advertisement companies have taken advantage of the ability to interact with customers, while previous ads in a newspaper provided no means of immediate conversation. These relatively new interactive ads are exciting, for they not only benifit the advertisers and sites by recieving more responses than traditional advertisemetns, but also benifit the consumer as well, giving her the ability to help decide what product will be manufactured.

SUPER COOL NEW TECHNOLOGY!

A team of researchers at M.I.T. have created a device which they are calling a "sixth sense technology," which allows one to browse the Internet, use the phone, check the time, take pictures, and practically everything else one can imagine. However, unlike a phone, i pod, or computer screen, this technology can be projected onto any possible surface imaginable, and is navigated through the motion of ones fingers in thin air. Sounds crazy right?? If you don't believe me, WATCH THIS VID!! 

As the MIT professor introduced the amazing features of this new technology, my though

Cover of The Terminator

ts continued to wander back ten or so years ago to the first time I watched "Terminator," starring the bodybuilder/actor/governor/moron, Arnold Schwarzenegger. For those of you who saw the movie, think back to the scenes that were meant to give us a look at the world through the Terminator's perspective. As he examined his surroundings, he received constant updates about his environment by a computer, giving useful information about everything he saw. Words can't describe how envious I was of the Terminator, imagining the advantage of having instant access to knowledge about my surroundings. This new technology developed by the folks at MIT has made this childhood dream a reality! (at least at the supermarket) It has the ability to scan any food at a supermarket and display useful information about the product catered to our preferences.
The second time I watched this video, I thought about about the most recent discussion I had with classmates, resulting in a general consensus that many people have become dangerously dependent on new forms of technology. We laughed as we exchanged stories of drivers who had placed full trust in onstar programs, willing to follow any direction given simply because they had become oblivious to their surroundings. The new technology developed by MIT, though exciting and a testament to our remarkable technological achievements, will only intensify our dependence on technology. However, for many, like the cheering audience in the video, new technology only enhances our understanding of the world as we know it. Furthermore, for them, the more technology is integrated into our daily routine, the better off we are.

The Impact of Skype

Though I have always been a fan of the many new sites that have sprung up across the Internet over the last couple years, up until a few months ago, no particular site had a profound or drastic effect on my life. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE having a facebook! However, unlike some, I see facebook as merely a fun way to keep in touch with friends and pass the time, but nothing more. Recently I discovered a site which has impacted my life in a big way, and the lives of millions in the world. It has allowed one to maintain relationships on a level unparalleled

Image via Wikipedia

by anything else. I am talking about Skype.
When my first cousin Rob (more like an older brother to me) moved to Sapitwa, Africa to research a cure for malaria, I was certain that we would never be as close again. Though we kept in touch over facebook, our once unbreakable relationship was beginning to deteriorate. Words on a page simply weren’t strong enough to uphold our friendship. In fact, the only time a felt close to him again was after watching a video he had posted of himself with friends in Africa. Seeing him come alive on my computer screen was more meaninful than any of our wall to wall posts on facebook over the past couple months. Frustrated by this, I turned to Google for help, searching something along the lines of “how to maintain friendships with those overseas WITHOUT facebook.” A few links down I came across this. There I found a string of videos, each documenting the stories of those who had begun to use Skype to maintain and uphold relationships with friends and loved ones. I discovered that in a matter of minutes anyone with a computer with a video lens could sign up for Skype for free and talk to others via live video. Several hours later, Rob and I might as well have been in the same room. We were seeing and hearing one another for the first time in months, expressing how remarkable it was that we could be doing this for free!

Some may disagree, but I am a strong believer that without the ability to see one and hear ones voice during conversation, inevitably a friendship or relationship will begin to deteriorate. Skype has not only changed my life, renewing the friendship I was beginning to lose grip of with Rob, but has also revolutionized our understanding of long distance friendships and relationships. No physical distance can ever truly keep two people apart again with Skype.

No More Second Chances

No More Second Chances

The Internet has had a drastic impact on the lives of millions of Americans. No one, I would argue, has been more affected by the Internet than those with a criminal record. Before the Internet it was conceivable that someone who was convicted of crime could avoid the ridicule of others after being released from prison by packing up his things, moving thousands of miles away, and starting fresh. Today, no physical distance travelled can escape the global reach of the Internet.

Image via Wikipedia

Within the last couple years sites have sprung up which have made all criminal records easily accessible to the public. On sites like familywatchdog and mapofsex offenders simply knowing ones name and zip code will give you a complete list of all the crimes one has committed. Though there are enormous benefits of the new accessibility of criminal records to the public, one can argue that the patriotic and comforting message of "second chances" no longer seems applicable. A young man who has lived a reckless life, for example, may choose to abandon this harsh lifestyle in favor of becoming a respectable member of society. However, one can never find peace knowing that a full list of ones destructive past is just a few clicks away. Also, this same young man will have enormous difficulty finding a job, an employer, who in the past would often not go through the time consuming process of a thorough background check on a potential employee, now can achieve this within a matter of minutes. What disturbs me the most however is the story of a man who was convicted of a crime but later proven innocent, yet, because numerous sites have yet to remove his criminal offense, no employer will hire him.
I don't doubt that the pros of making criminal records accessible to the public far outweigh the cons. Still, it scares me knowing that no matter how minor the crime, anyone with Internet access can see this.