If any of you all are into Fitness and have an iPhone or iPad, Please be sure to check out some of my apps on the app store. My Companies name is STOREBOUGHTMILK APPS.
This is my best selling app called Workout Hero. Its been in or around the iTunes top 100 for about 14 months.
I watched a short film called “The Apocalypse”. The movie was freaking awesome! The idea was that if anyone had any thought whatsoever, their head would explode. The 5 minute video which starts with a group of 4 people ends with everyone dead. The movie seems to be poking at how our country went from and industrial society to a technological society and people have stopped thinking for themselves. The movie starts with the group of 4 sitting, watching TV and being board. They are trying to think of something to do, then, when one has an idea his head explodes. Near the end their are 2 characters left and they discovered that thinking causes the head explosion. But, they still both die. The last character dies because a good looking girl “from upstairs” comes into their apartment half naked from the shower and asked the guy what they should do.
The movie ends with two people who weren’t original characters who are both not very intelligent. They have to force themselves to come up with an idea on what to do in the situation (which is comical) then before their heads explode the movie ends.
This was a very creative short film and was not at all what I expected it would be but it was still very good.
After checking out the website for this tour I'm hooked. If I lived in California or had the money to fly there, I would go on the Warner VIP tour! The tour allows you to go through some of the most famous sets ever used in movie and TV history and they have a museum that has props from almost all of their movies. This would be a really cool experience to see where the movies are actually made. The website itself for the tour was also very well done. It was easy and fun to use. There was lots of videos and pictures to see and you can read about all your favorite Warner brothers shows.
The VIP tour isn’t too expensive at $50 a person and $250 for the deluxe tour although i’d probably stick to the VIP tour since the deluxe is pretty expensive.
After taking this tour and comparing it to the New York Times digital tour, I can confidently say that I like the NYT tour much better. This is an unbiased answer too because, if I had to choose a favorite company between the two, it would be the weather channel. Of the two tours, I expected The Weather channel tour to be more advanced digitally and easier to use since the weather channel does much more via website and apps than does the New York Times (just my opinion). But, surprisingly the New York Times tour was much better and more fun to use. The NYT tour was more intuitive and was laid out much better. I also felt the the NYT video had much more info and things to see compared to the Weather Channel Tour. In fact, While going through the Weather Channel “Tour” section of the website, I was worried I was actually in the wrong place because it didn’t even really seem like a tour to me. On several occasions I went back to the original link the instructor provided just to be sure I was in the right place.
The NYT tour and the Weather Channel tours are great examples of how to properly do a digital tour (NYT) and how to not do a digital tour (Weather Channel).
Below is a screen shot and link of both tours. If you haven’t been to them yet, check them out and see for yourself.
All I can say is WOW! After the blog we did a few weeks ago about newspaper not doing so well because of the evolving digital newspapers, I may have been wrong in my blog. If they can afford a tower building like this in New York, they must be doing ok.
The most interesting design of the building, in my opinion, was the metal frames on all for sides of the building. The video explains that the metal frames were designed for light enhancement inside the building. Personally, I think it ruins the look of the building.
But, thats not why I think that feature is interesting. Its interesting to me because I believe that that frame actually serves another purpose. Many government buildings and embassy also use similar features on the outside as a way to block signals that may be coming into the building. This keeps people from listening in on the building and assists in retaining sensitive information. This is just a guess by the way and it probably seems like some conspiracy theory. But, thats what it looks like to me :)
I’m probably way off on my guess but, that is definitely the most intriguing part of the tour video to me.
The rest of the building (catfeteria, lobby, newsroom) look very nice! I definitely wouldn’t be too upset if I had to work there.
As for the tour, I think its great! The tour gives you a good feel of what the building is like and shows you all of the main parts of the building. The tour is incredibly educational and was very pleasing to go through. I think that more companies should start doing virtual tours like this.
The recording industry’s evolution to me is incredibly intriguing. During my first attempt at college (12 years ago) I was very much into music and was in a band. Back then, although there was computers and the internet, music was still mainly recorded in analog formats unless you were rich or had a very famous band. Now days anyone with a computer, smart phone, or tablet can record at a minimum of a 5 track song. 5 tracks meaning you have the ability to have 5 different recording the you can change and mix as you please. The Beatles used a 5 track recorder on several of their albums in analog meaning that it went onto a tape. Analog recording quality was incredibly sub-par in todays music recording standards. Almost all forms of music today are recorded digitally (music saves to a computer) and can have an unlimited amount of tracks that can be recorded.
This is amazing to me. In a very short amount of time the music industry went from analog recording to digital, then to having trouble financially.
Once the ability to record your own music and then share and download either free music or paid music that people illegally downloaded for free became available, sales plummeted and the recording industry had to start being more friendly in terms of pricing. The creation of the original version of the file sharing service “Napster” also directly contributed to the evolution of the recording industry.
I cant wait to see what is the next evolution within this industry.
Here is a video of the recording app “Garage Band” on an Apple iPad:
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
BLOG 15 (STATE OF THE MEDIA)
After taking a good hard look at the website www.stateofthemedia.com it became immediately apparent that no longer is the INTERNET the new kid in town (with large influence) when it comes to the media. Although the internet is still one of the key players in media, the new big player in the media game is the mobile device that uses the internet. Some mind blowing statistics that really stuck out at me what the fact that 77% of adults own a computer of some kind, 44% of adults own a smartphone!, and 18% own a tablet! To me thats mind blowing!
So, just to do some quick match here. If the US has around 314 million people and there roughly 200 million adults in the US. That means that there are over roughly over 88,000,000 smart phone being used by adults (even more with kids) and 36,000,000 tablets being used by adults! WOW.
It seems that the future of media is going to keep progressing towards even more mobile use, at least until something new comes out. The fact all point towards increased mobile usage and the children today are growing up with mobile devices unlike most adults who didn’t grow up with them. I believe the younger generations will be even more inclined to use mobile devices and new technologies.
Below is a link to my favorite page of the state of the media website and a picture that was pulled from that page with all the mobile data neatly presented on it.
For this blog, we were asked to become a member of the NEWU.org website and to take the online “INTRO TO ETHICS” class that is hosted free from the site.
After taking the course I can confidently say there are definitely some things in regards to ethics that I had never considered.
The main section of the course that really interested me was the “ETHICS IN PRACTICE” section. To me there is really no better way to learn about ethics than reading about REAL WORLD applications or good and bad ethics (although this course discussed mostly BAD ethics). Inside this category there were two topics that really interested me because they are two things that I had never really put much thought into. The first was “conflict of interest” and the second was “deception”.
Conflict of interest, although something I have never put a lot of thought into, definitely can happen in real life. The example they gave that I liked the most was of a news reporter who had been appointed to a council at the white house. So, when that happened the dilemma was that where does the loyalties really lie in this situation?
Deception, although possibly less common the conflict of interest, does happen. One of the examples I really liked that that they use is reports after 11SEP2001 trying to “TEST THE SYSTEM” to see what flaws our system might have. Well, that definitely using deception and can be very dangerous.
The topic of internet saftey is incredibly important when it comes to our children. With billions of online users (many of them being possible criminals and/or perverts) the internet is a very dangerous place. All it takes is for a child to give an address (or unintentional location hint) to the wrong person and something very bad could happen to your child.
Although there has been some attempts to educate children via online games, these attempts to me are sub-par at best. After playing the AT&T internet safety game for only 5 minutes it became apparent to me that although they have tried to create an educational game, their effort wont account to much in terms of internet safety for children. For starters, the game has no age settings (unlike the GAD GUYPATROL from Alberta child services and microsoft). upon entry into the game, the gamer is presented with a cheap/low budget looking game that only fills 1/3 of your computer screen. The game only has annoying sounds and no vocals from the characters so the gamer is stuck having to read paragraphs of text (HMM that sounds fun). The game started loosing my attention at around 4 min and I pushed my self to go at least 5 min. So, I would say a kid would play about 2-3 minutes before loosing interest. But, 2 minutes is going to be barely long enough for the gamer to even read the instructions since they will probably be 8-12 years old. That is my guess on age. I guess 8-12 because the context and feel of the game makes it feel like it for about 8-9 years old but the gamer is present with lots of reading so I had to increase my age guess to 12 at most. I would suggest anyone over twelve using the game because its a little kids game and they won’t even want to play it since at around 10-12 the kid begins to feel they want something a little bit OLDER :) Although I don’t think having long text is always a bad idea, I do believe that a voice commentary instead would have been a much better idea.
Here are a few screen shots of the long text that I was presented (for my 7 year old, this would take a while to read):
This has been a very difficult topic for me. The questions posted for this blog was how do I feel about the government and companies filtering what goes out today. The second part of the questions was, should it be up to those entities or up to the individual.
On one hand I DO NOT like the idea of the government or a company telling me what I should or should be exposed to on the TV, radio or internet. PERIOD. But, I keep finding reasons that I actually think they should actually filter more.
Let me explain.
To begin, I want to explain that my primary example will be the radio and that I actually believe that over the past 10 years there has actually been an incredible DECREASE in the amount of filtering the FCC is doing when it comes to what is disseminated over the air waves. 10 years ago having an “ALLOWED” swear word or talking/singing about a topic like SEX or drugs (although still done but to a lesser extent) was basically shunned upon. I a believe that since then there has been an incredible increase in blatantly vulgar topics in music on the radio. I have 2 little girls (7 and 3 years old) who I constantly find singing to the radio. Problem is that one day my wife and I started really listening to the lyrics and what our daughters were singing. All I can say is good thing they didn’t know what they were singing about.
Just about every other song we listened to on the POP radio station either had vulgar language or adult content.
So, you can see how I am torn between wanting less filtering but, I don’t want my daughters exposed to adult content.
Our solution was to simply not listen to the radio with our kids in the car. We bought some CD’s and that now what we listen to.
LINK:
Sexist and vulgar: Why is this the music of today?
As technology advances so does our movie making abilities. The “Chroma Key” (Green/blue screen) was developed in the 1950’s to allow the layering of two images or videos at once. Chroma Key, Chroma meaning color range, easily allows for the removal of a background. However, the technique was did not become widely used until the early 1990’s due to technological limitations. Chroma Key works by using a solid color as a background that can easily be made transparent enabling the ability to add in a second image or video. Some common uses for Chroma Key is showing the weather on the news and movie/TV special effects.
My favorite move that uses chroma key is Avatar. First of all, that movie ROCKS! and if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it. But, in regards to chroma key, that movie took it to an extreme. Chroma Key was used throughout the movie enhancing the movies amazing alien planet scenery.
Here is a amazing clip. Can you pick out where the green screen is?
What A great old film. This video had shootouts, hostage situations, chases, and lots of crazy organ music!
Although this wasn’t the most entertaining film i’ve seen (mainly because of the crazy background music) it most certainly was very fun to see what one of the oldest American movies in existence looked like. This must have been so high tech stuff back in the early 1900’s when it was released. For the technology they had available at the time and the length of the movie, they really did a great job telling the story of the robbers stealing items from the train, running into some close calls and then getting chased by what seems to be old fashioned law enforcement.
The Blue Store VS red box VS digital movie debate has been ongoing in my house for several years now. My family love to watch movies as do I.
About 10 years ago we did nothing but rent movies from blockbuster. At that time (before REDBOX and digital movies) Blockbuster was the king of movie rentals. But, now days most Blockbusters have gone out of business and rightly so. The creation of digital movie streaming and REDBOX has revolutionized the way the people RENT and BUY movies at home.
Lately my wife and I have been renting movies from Amazon Prime. The reason for this is that although REDBOX is usually only .99c for a 1 day rental, it is very inconvenient to go to the store, buy the movie while standing in the cold, then watch the movie that same day and return it as quickly as possible before you get charged and arm and a leg.
With Amazon Prime, its usually 3X or 4X more expensive than REDBOX but, your paying for convenience.
Yes, I can understand some people reading this may think I am crazy for paying more than I have to for movie rentals but… anytime I think that I am paying to much for a rental, I just think about the price of movie rentals 10 years ago, which were about $4-$6 dollars. Yes, movie rentals have actually gotten cheaper.
This was a fun one for me. I have always been a fan of the show The Twilight Zone and the old time radio show I chose to listen to was a Sci-Fi called 2000 plus, from the world of tomorrow “A Veteran Comes Home”.
This story was about a man who fought 5 years in a war on mars and comes home. It was amazing to me home much detail the put into the radio shows. I felt like I was watching Twilight Zone but was just missing the TV picture. I kept the show playing in the background while doing some homework and it wasn’t too bad to listen to. I don’t think this is something that I could listen to for a long time though since it can be a little annoying over a long period of time. Although a lot of effort was put into the show, I think I would still rather watch TV. But, I can imagine that before TV, this would be a great way to be entertained over the radio. In all, this was very fun to experience a radio show like they they did before there was televison.
Below is a link to the radio show I listened to if anyone is interested:
This is going to be a tough for me to remained unbiased since I am an app developer and create apps for the iTunes app store. But, I have done my best to formulate an unbiased opinion and here it is.
I choose iTunes. But, before you think I made a biased decision please hear me out.
Here is 4 subjects that helped me to make my decision:
Price: Its obvious that Napster is generally cheaper than iTunes. Napster allows you to purchase a monthly rental plan for $10 a month and iTunes is normally .99 cents a song. Yes, in price Napster wins but, ill explain why that didn’t mater for me later on in this blog.
Ownership Rights: With iTunes, you pay for a song or album, then they are yours forever. With Napster, thats not the case. Napster is a monthly service that allows you to listen to the songs but you don’t own them. Then, for .99 (plus the $10 a month) you can actually pay for the song to own it and then listen to that song later if you decide you don’t want to pay the monthly fee.
Music Players: I am an iPhone, iPod and iPad user. I have to be since I make apps. so, its much easier for me to just use iTunes to get songs and to stick them right on my devices. With Napster, you can listen to the rented music but you have to use their app or pay the extra $$ to actually buy the song. Then there is the added effort of transferring songs and figuring out formats.
Song Availability: Napster looses big time in this category since they offer much less in song availability. Thats very understandable to me since artists want to make more money. iTunes has more users and charges a little bit more. If an artists makes the same profits as an app developer, their profit is 70% of .99c. so, .70c which isn’t the best but, its not bad when you can have 10,000 downloads a day of 1 song.
so, there you have it :)
I am very interested to see what others think about my decision.
This has been a topic of debate for years since the inception of E-reader devices. An E-reader is a device that can display digital images of books and magazines. These readers can come in many shapes, sizes and formats. Some of the more popular readers today for reading magazine are called tablets. These tablets primarily have either Android or Apple operating systems on them and are basically flat portable computers.
I agree John Temple (former editor and publisher of The Rocky Mountain News) (see video below) that the news paper will not die out. But, I believe it has significantly lost revenue and its reader base in the last 5 years and will slowly continue to do so. At a minimum, it will slowly continue to loose its “paper format” readers. I believe there is 3 reasons for this: competition, price, and convenience. With such a large amount of web users and tablet users, the digital newspaper is slowly taking over and because of the simplicity (compared to printing) of creating digital newspapers and magazines, there are many more people in this field creating mediums for reading the news. This is reducing the number of people reading the larger newspapers news and is also driving down the price of the newspaper itself. If you look at the iTunes app store, there is now a section just for news papers and news. That section has thousands of news mediums and the cost is incredibly cheap.
In order for the large companies to stick around, they need to be competitive in the digital market. And, thats exactly what they are trying to do. evolution is important for any business but right now, the newspapers are really needing to evolve fast or they could possibly go out of business.
I wanted to start this blog by saying schools banning book is completely ridiculous! Maybe the school hasn’t heard but there is a new thing out there called the internet. So, even if the school has a very good reason (although I can’t think of any) to ban a book, the student who wants to read it can turn use their smart phone to find the book in a matter of seconds. Oh and by the way, since they are banning books, they should ban the internet. Actually, if they are going to ban the internet they really should start with TV since their is much worse content on many prime time TV shows than there is in a dictionary. Anyone who has watched a prime time TV show (The Office, Parks and Rec, Modern family, to name a few) has probably learned about SEX, heard hundreds of foul words, and been exposed to extreme violence or adult situations. But, the fact that a student can find the book anyways isn’t really the main topic of discussion here so i’ll save that for another day.
That felt more like a rant then a blog post but hey, someone needed to say it :)
To provide you with a little bit of information on why books are banned, here is what the Office of Intellectual Freedom has listed for the 3 primary reasons for ban requests:
Quote:
Often challenges are motivated by a desire to protect children from “inappropriate” sexual content or “offensive” language. The following were the top three reasons cited for challenging materials as reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom:
the material was considered to be "sexually explicit"
the material contained "offensive language"
the materials was "unsuited to any age group"
I actually don’t disagree with the concept. Its good to want to protect our children. I have 2 children and its a continuous effort to ensure that they don’t learn anything too adult until they are old enough.
My concern lies in the reasoning and motives of the people asking to have the books banned and then the schools who agree to do the banning. If its a book about Karma sutra, lets ban that thing. But the dictionary??!! hmmm. seems kinda silly.
If its really that much of a concern, a modified version of the book needs to be produced and distributed in lieu the original.
That would be my suggestion.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
BLOG 4 “To err is human, to repent is divine; to persist is devilish”
The poor richards almanac, written by Benjamin Frankilin was an annual publication released from 1732-1759. The almanac contained a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, other amusements and witticisms.
One of my favorite quotes from the almanac is this:
“To err is human, to repent is divine; to persist is devilish”
I found this quote to be incredibly simple and yet be right on target when it comes to human behavior. My understanding of the quote is that people make mistakes and need to seek forgiveness. But, if you intentionally persist, you dont care about the mistake and continue the same behavior. I like how he uses the word devilish because it gives it the feel of your doing something evil since you have chosen to continue the mistake multiple times.
I definitely need to purchase a paper copy of one of these. An orginal would be even cooler :)
Will definitely be getting this version on Amazon:
Its amazing how things can change in such a short amount of time. When I was a kid I was always outside playing. If I wanted to talk to a friend, I would ride my bike to their house and knock on the door. Most of the time my friend would already be at the park playing and the friends parent would tell me where they were and I would ride my bike there to meet them. In rare occasions if I couldn’t find them, I might later call their house to see if they were home. Even in this scenario, I would still want to go meet them to hang out because face to face communication was my primary means of communication. In fact, most of the time my parents didn’t even want me to use the phone.
Now days, its the exact opposite. Face to face communication is often used to talk to a person only when they didn’t answer a phone call or text.
The question to be answered in this blog is does the internet inhibit real social interaction or promote it?
I think thats a unique question that is really left up to an individuals interpretation. Let me explain what I mean:
Technically, then internet promotes more interaction. There is significantly more potential for a person to have much more interactions via the web than in a face to face scenario. Also, interaction is almost instant and there are many form of communications. People preferences for interaction can be appeased easily by just changing the internet platform used to interact. Its much easier for a person to conduct hundreds or thousands of interactions a day using multiple platforms and to me that makes it seem that people can now be more social.
After some thought i determined I really need to define what a “real interaction” is. After a lot of searching, I couldn’t find a definition the the words “social interaction” so I decided to break them apart and see what I thought.
“Interaction” definition (via wikipedia): Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect
“Social” definition: he term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms as applied to populations of humans and other animals. It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.
So, its seems that physical presence isnt listed and based on this research, a interaction via the web would be a real social interaction.
To answer the question specifically, NO, I DO NOT thinking the internet is inhibiting social interactions.
The above answer is my unbiased answer to the question :)
However, The dying art form of face to face communication is incredibly sad. The ability to communicate in person is absolutely essential in order to efficiently function in daily life and work.
Although the internet isn't inhibiting our social interactions, it does seems to be inhibiting our ability to communicate in person (generally speaking, looking at the issue from a statistics standpoint).
I have posted an article below that gives some incredible statistics on the internet and social interacrtion
In the video below titled Media Convergence by CBS, Jeff Greenfield explains that over the last 20 years there has been an extreme evolution in the delivery of news and media. Before the evolution people used television and paper as their primary means to receive the news and these methods accounted for 70% of how people receive their news. Now days, the Internet is the primary delivery platform and has assisted in the reduction of older delivery methods of news and media consumption (according to the video) which is now only 30%.
Jeff Greenfield mentions at the end of the video that a love of story telling, clear vivid language, and a respect for history are essential in the delivery of news and that is how CBS has remained a credible and popular news source to this day.
I agree with MR. Greenfield. Credible news and media should always take these factors into account and without them, there really isn't a sure way to receive honest and well constructed news. However, there is an issue with this concept. The internet has billions of users, social media sites have hundreds of millions of users and news/media can also now be instantly be delivered via dozens of methods to mobile devices. The issue lies in the fact that not everyone who publishes or posts news and media know or even care about these factors that MR. Greenfield has mentioned. Honest and credible news isn't always the agenda of people and some people just don't care. Furthermore, its apparent the even the more credible news agencies have begun using less than honest stories to play into the agencies own agendas.
The bad news is that the credibility of news will only get worse with time and there isnt much WE can do about it.
The good news is that having knowledge on this issue and evolution of media can keep you aware of the possible discrepancies in the news your are receiving and remind you to be open minded and possibly view the same news from multiple sources.
With a score of 23, I ended with an "Average" on-line user score on the Internet Junkie Test. Thats amazing to me because I use the internet on a daily basis! Between my iPhone, which I rely on for email, texting (family and work), FaceTime, and online internet use ...AND... my computer usage for work, school and fun, I probably total about 3-4 hours of daily usage. I DO NOT however have an addiction to the internet. In fact, its quite the opposite. Although I do agree that when I use the internet, it is A GOOD USE OF MY TIME because it simplifies my daily tasks and allows me access to virtually unlimited amounts of information, I usually feel tired of having to use the internet because I do use it so frequently. In fact, if I find a chance to not use the internet I almost always take it. This is most likely the reason for my LOW scores on the junky test.
Unfortunately, I do believe my frequency of internet use is the best use of my time. The internet is an invaluable resource. However, I do believe that people and business is slowly becoming to dependent on the internet. It seems that the more people rely on the internet, the less self sufficient they COULD become.
If the internet was gone one day, I think many people would have no idea what to do with themselves.
