Group Project

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We don't think media production will stoop down to individual productions. There will always be movies that have this strategy such as (Paranormal Activity, Blare Witch or Clover Field), however, it will never take over all media. It will never be the main way of making movies. We believe it's just another way to convince the audience to buy a product or service, as well as intriguing people to watch movies and television.

2.
Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto Digg or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?
New York Times article
Live Analysis; United States versus Canada

Tags: Olympics, Hockey, Sports, Canadian Upset, US, Canada, Sport's Media, Men's Hockey
Digg: Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, hockey, Jaromir Jagr, Men's hockey, Mike Babcock, ron wilson, Russia, Sidney Crosby, Sweden, United States.

The Digg website consisted of more specific details than our tags. We focused more on the sport and the different aspects of hockey, instead of the Olympics in general.

3.Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

It is important for transparency to be involved in the Social Media world because its what sustain the whole social media or user generated world. If people weren't ready to expose themselves on Facebook or Twitter, than those types of social media would be non-existent. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube rely on people to express themselves and their opinions. If people slowly stopped being transparent then the social media would feel the "domino effect" and eventually fail. As a group, we believe that is just as important to be transparent online as well as offline. Being transparent online allows you to express and connect yourself to multiple people at a time. However, having transparency offline allows more personal interaction as well as creates a more personal relationship. Overall, we think that people have a tendency to be more transparent online than offline. However, we think that there is no distinct reason for transparency to be more important than one another.

Digital Nation part 2

I found that the most interesting part about the second half of Digital Nation is how much people live there lives through characters on an online game such as Second Life or World of Warcraft. I never doubted that people spent hours of the day playing these games, but I never thought it got to the extent where people would actually die from not eating due to the result of playing these games.

It's hard to say whether I think these games are a bad thing. Sure, it is a much better experience to go outside and play with friends, but that's not always an option for people. I guess games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allows us to be someone we are really not in real life. After watching the film, I decided to create my own avatar for Second Life. When I was creating it, I guess my initial reaction was to create the person I would have liked to be. Rest assure, I wasn't really indulged in the Second Life world, and really spent only a few minutes on it before quitting, but i could definitely see the appeal for someone who may be into that.

Movies like the recent Surrogate and Avatar really do show an accurate way in which what life may turn into in the future. It may come to the point where we only communicate with people through machines. It's a future which is not necessarily something that people want to embrace, but it is looking more and more likely as time passes.

Digital Nation

There is no question that we live in a world of technology. Everything from constantly being distracted from class cause of the laptop that is right in front of us or even getting into a car accident cause we think that we are able to text and drive at the same time cause we are "great multi-taskers."

Like everyone else, I am stuck in this digital age. I always find myself on the computer doing something, whether its productive or not. I do not know how much of an impact this has had me considering I was raised in the midst of this revolution. It is hard for me to say that this technology should be considered a bad thing. Yes, it has controlled my life over the past years, but it has also provided a means of communication for me. Sights like Skype and Facebook has provided more of a way for me to stay connected with family and friends across the world.

I believe that one of the problems is that schools, such as Marist, are accepting the factor that the Internet has taken over our live. Sights like iLearn encourage us to be on the computer much longer than expected. In my current math class, my homework is done online. I spent hours on the computer doing it, hurting my eyes. I do not believe that an entire class, especially math, should be based online.

User-generated content- refers to various kinds of media content, created by users and consumers that is posted online and publicly available.

Long Tail- retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities, usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.

Web Operating System- this is the part of the internet that allows it to keep running and connect everyone across the web.

Folksonomy- a new way to categorize information by giving each piece a series of tags to identify it.

Web Syndication- when one sites information can be found on multiple other sites.

Mass Collaboration- when a lot of people work on the same project, usually on the internet.

Computer-Supported Collaboration- items on the computer such as chat that allow people to communicate.

Hosted Service- companies who partake in this sell software online.

Web application- an application that has its home on the internet and can only be accessed via online.

social-software- websites such as facebook and myspace that allow peers to communicate and come into contact with each other.

Video-sharing sites- sites like youtube, google video, and yahoo video that allow users to post their own videos online for others to view.

Wikis- a website that allows for easy editing and posting by anyone on the web.

Blogs- websites where one user usually has his/her own page and edits it with posts of text, photos, and videos.

Mashup- a website that is created with two or more different pieces that are made to be faster and more efficient.