I think live blogging definitely has the ability to change the perception of something that you’re passionate about. Depending on how quickly a blogger will update it could be a lot of short, bare information that they want you to take in. They want to high light the important bits and pieces so you’ll miss out on all the finer details. If a person has a passion for something they normally want to take in as much information as they can so reading a live blog might not be the best. But that’s the world today, as soon as something happens we want to hear about it. I know for award shows I don’t necessarily follow along on a live blog post but on twitter that is what my feed is dominated by. It makes me feel like I have to watch, to know what all my friends are talking about. “Imagine Dragons and Kendrick just killed that performance.” Of course things like this are going to interest me and make me want to see what everyone is talking about. I think big time sporting events and award shows have benefitted the most from twitter. Just these past Academy Awards Ellen broke the records for most retweets. People are watching but not only are they watching they want to join the conversation with other people. I guess this can be a positive thing or a negative thing, depending on how you look at it. It’s bad enough that we spend hours in front of the tv, but now were watching the tv and paying attention to our cell phones? Seems like overkill. I think in a way live blogging is almost addicting for readers. Always wanting the new information, always wanting to stay in the loop, and don’t have any time to waste. Like I said with me, it basically forced me to watch these award shows.
ricky
Is Crowdsourcing Hurtful or Helpful?
Image by Superhub
The article by Jeff Howe “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” talks about how with the technological advances crowdsourcing is not only becoming a more viable solution to problems as far as cost and efficiency but it is also pushing out outsourcing and people who specialize in specific areas of work as well.
To put in layman’s terms, crowdsourcing is glorified group work to find the solution to problems. People from all over the planet are able to contribute. Some sites offer a fair amount of money for your work if you specialize in something while other sites such as Mechanical Turk by Amazon (as Howe mentions) there is not much monetary rewards. In his article Howe brings up examples of how this can be a good thing but at the same time there are people that suffer from crowdsourcing.
Howe used the example of a photographer in the very beginning of his article stating that “In 2000, Harmel made roughly $69,000 from a portfolio of 100 stock photographs, a tidy addition to what he earned from commissioned work. Last year his stock business generated less money – $59,000 – from more than 1,000 photos. That’s quite a bit more work for less money.” When there is so much information and in this case photographs available at the blink of an eye because of the technological advances it dilutes the products value. At one point you would pay someone a lot of money for a couple of images or images of something particular you were looking for but with crowdsourcing you can have a lot of images for a lot less money.
It makes sense for businesses to use crowdsourcing because if they spend less money but make the same amount then that’s a greater profit for them obviously but for artists or photographers we can see how crowdsourcing is harmful to their craft. Another reason why crowdsourcing can be beneficial is to world problems. With the internet you have to ability to connect everyone at the blink of an eye, whether you live in Australia or New Jersey, you can work together to find a solution to a problem. When you have a greater amount of people working towards one goal the chances of getting what you want done obviously rise. One example is with the missing flight of the Missing Malaysia Airline. People from all over the world are trying to figure out what could have happened, where the plane is, what actually went wrong. You have all of these people from all over the world with different types of backgrounds and education trying to reach a common goal the you will eventually have results and solutions.
Overall crowdsourcing definitely has it’s benefits, but as with most things there will be the people that are not able to adapt and will suffer because of it.
Final Thesis
With the day and age that we’re in and the way kids are being educated with computers at such a young age, blogging is quickly becoming an accessible platform for millions of people to be able to share their thoughts or ideas to a wider audience.
Three Blogs I Follow
The three blogs that I chose to talk about are blogs that not only have my interest by their subject matter, but also by how they show off this content. A National Geographic tumblr blog, Gizmodo and a blog called Crumblepop. Each of these blogs have a different type of element that I would like to incorporate in my final product for a blog and I think that by viewing these I can get a lot of helpful ideas and hints on how to succeed at that.
First off we have the National Geographic page. This blog is great because of how simple it is. It is all about pictures, just older, high quality, captivating images. Huge pictures that take up a big portion of the screen when you first click that you are forced to focus on the pictures at hand. I want my blog and the pictures I post to have this same dominating affect when people come to visit. The layout is very simple and that’s what I like about it, you go there to see these pictures and take in all that they have to offer.
The next one is Gizmodo. A very popular technology website that talks about news and products in the world of technology. One thing I enjoy about Gizmodo is how much information they give you. You can choose from a bunch of different topics in the world of technology and they normally lure you in by a captivating headline of .GIF. There are a couple downsides to Gizmodo as well though. Sometimes the things that they are talking about seem foreign and confusing, and even I have trouble following along with what they are talking about. I understand that the subject matter may be a little difficult but at times they don’t do much to ease you into that transition, they just give you this information and hope you make something with it.
Finally I picked Crumblepop as a blog to follow. This blog has a lot to do with the video editing software Final Cut Pro. It’s software that I’ll sometimes use when I make my videos but at times can be like learning a new language. It talks about tips and tricks with the software and has some effects that you can buy. The main reason why I chose this blog was because of the tutorial videos because I know I always get stuck a bunch when I work with Final Cut so it comes in very helpful.
My final blog I hope contains a few elements of all of these sites: the way national geographic boasts beautiful images for you, the way Gizmodo makes technology accessible and the way Crumblepop helps you out with tutorials and tricks. Going to try and keep all of these aspects and get rid of the negative ones each site presents.
9to5mac
After I figured out all of the RSS readers and what they were and how to used them I used the Old Reader for no reason in particular, in fact if I’m going to be honest I had my brother pick a number either 1, 2 or 3 and came out with the Old Reader. The Old Reader says it’s currently in BETA form and you can tell and can name some things it can work on but it still gets the job done. Anyway, when I was using the google blog search I wasn’t exactly sure what type of stuff I was looking for so I used normal google for some brain storming ideas. I checked the best blogs of 2013 according to TIME magazine and a few other lists and plugged those into my RSS reader. I came up with 10 to follow actually. But the first one that I chose was called “9to5mac”.
9to5mac is a site that has to do with everything Apple products. Everything form lap tops to iPods to accessories. I would consider myself a pretty big Apple fan. I’ve had the iPhone ever since it came out for Verizon, my macbook since I graduated high school, an iPad, and iPod classic. I’m not entirely sure what I’ve always wanted to use Apple products, maybe the Apple advertising was that good or in my mind it was the “cool” product, but whatever the reason I’ve always used them and have always wanted the get the newest updates or see what all the hype was about. 9to5mac does all of that for me and more. They have in depth product reviews, rumors about what could be coming out next and even some “how to” guides. Normally I used to just see what someone like Gizmodo would tweet but they were all technology in general not just apple stuff and that was all I really cared about.
Taking the site at face value is very simple too, and I think that’s what they were going for when you make a blog about Apple, which is known for trying to be as simple and work as seamlessly as possible. The advertisements are there but other than that it is very simple, a larger picture so show you what the article is about, who wrote it and a few sentences before you can click read more. It is very clean and very simple.
Over all 9to5mac is something that interests me because of the subject matter and because how the blog looks. I can be an Apple fan boy and just read about the apple stuff I like to see.
Introduction
Hi everyone,
My name is Ricky Martinez and I’m a senior at Rutgers graduating at the end of this semester. I’m majoring in English with a minor in education. I plan on one day hopefully becoming a high school english teacher down the road. I have a younger brother but he’s only 2 years younger than me so he’s more like one of my really good friends. I originally attended Ocean County College for two years when I first graduated high school. I played on the soccer team there and we were nationally ranked too. I still live in Brick Town and commute here for classes, but I have enough friends here on campus where if I need a place to sleep I can just crash on one of their couches. My father lives in North Carolina and my mother lives in Spring Lake. My father moved from the house I currently live in to North Carolina for work so me and my brother and a couple of my friends live in my house and pay my father rent for the mortgage and stuff like that, so that’s pretty fun.
Some of the things that interest me are:
- Traveling
- Snowboarding
- Harry Potter
Traveling: I like going places all the time. I’m always down to just drop my stuff and go wherever. I manage to make a pretty decent schedule for classes so I don’t have classes on Thursdays and Fridays and have long weekends all the time for trips. I was just in Boston last weekend actually. I have a few friends in California so I visit there pretty often. This past summer I visited one of my friends in Australia and we road tripped from Sydney all the way up to Melbourne. After that we went to California and drove from Malibu along the coast all the way up into Oregon so that was definitely fun.
Snowboarding: I like to snowboard a lot, and this seasons we’ve actually gotten a lot of snow, unlike the past couple of years. I mostly go to Mountain Creek but sometimes I go into PA and go to Big Boulder because I have friends that live there. One of my friends actually got a picture in Transworld Snowboard Magazine a couple of months ago so that was cool to see. Here it is:
Kyle Gregory
Harry Potter: It’s pretty safe to say that I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. Ever since I was little and could start reading it was always Harry Potter. I lost count of how many times i’ve read the books or watched the movies. I used to be one of those kids that waited in Barnes and Noble and midnight to pick up the newest ones. I went to Florida last winter break too so I obviously had to go to Harry Potter world which was awesome.
Another fun thing I like to do is mess around with my GoPro camera. I like to take pictures and videos of my friends whenever we go on a trip or get bored or something but I put a couple of them on Vimeo and if you ever wanted to check them out just click this… https://vimeo.com/user12438489
RU Creative Blogging SP14 