Archive for the ‘digital media’ tag
Pump Down the Noise
Image by Brad Fitzpatrick
As a digital media nerd, I have no problem managing a billion different accounts on the Internet. From social networking sites to bank accounts, I’ve accumulated about 30-40 different logins from the past 5 years. I’m definitely not a pack rat by any means, but I’m starting to feel like I have too much junk in my (digital) trunk.
Just like my spring cleaning thought process, I tried to justify the need for my online “memberships”. I tried to comprehend my new pack rat status by slicing and dicing the facts. Why is it that I am able to throw away material items that I don’t need, but I don’t mind hoarding digital goods?
To Twitter, or not to Twitter
This week, I started using Twitter after almost a year long hiatus with a few attempts in between. And now, I’m absolutely hooked.
During my first class in the MCDM program, my professor encouraged us to play around with Twitter. As a long time social networking site user and a web 2.0 advocate, I’d self proclaimed myself as an early adopter to new tools and gadgets.
Boy, was I wrong.
It was difficult for me to understand why I would feel the need to update my exact whereabouts practically every minute of the day, especially when I already had a tool that worked just perfectly fine. I had been tailoring my Facebook updates to express my two cents to a closed group of social networks. Besides, status updates become more fun when you have an audience reading your daily rants and thoughts and commenting back with stamps of approval or comic relief.
Then, I discovered that Twitter is quite different than a just fancy version of Facebook status updates.
Walk the QuickTime Line
Who doesn’t love Johnny Cash?
More importantly, who doesn’t love QuickTime?
The movie, ‘Walk the Line’ has an official website to promote their DVDs. As you enter the site, QuickTime is immediately integrated into the homepage using various clips from the movie. I enjoy this particular feature because it is visually appealing–and websites that promote media such as movies, televison shows, and concerts are best delivered with smooth, uninterrupted, and flashy streaming media rather than extremely detailed text. If I could change one feature, I would not use an unlimited loop for the background video– it’s efficient to catch the user’s initial attention, but it becomes distracting after one or two loops.
