IN RESPONSE APRIL 27 POST: GEN Y

In response to my April 23 post, I have concluded that while I am Gen-Y I am still a still just a product of my environment and a large part of that has nothing to do with technology. I make it in this world of technology. I got my cell phone in 10th grade unlike many others who had one way before, my ipod is only a little shuffle but serves its purpose, I got cable probably close to when I started college ( Yes, I grew up on PBS Wishbone, Arthur, Dragontales), I have no GPS system in my car, and really don't desire to. I just started texting seriously in the last 1 year about. I believe I am Gen-Y in the sense that I know how to interact and use the devices of my generation, as they come naturally however I am not dependent on them as I grew up without many of them. 

  Throughout the majority of this class I have grown to further appreciate the use of technology and the applications these uses provide, however I also have grown to further appreciate the foundations that were here before technology: Communication, conversation, love, and the value of things that take time. I value both types, however, everything needs a balance. 

Twitter: I Don't Get It, But Someone Must

         While driving to the gas station on Saturday, I was listening to C-Span radio (90.1fm) as they discussed the upcoming Correspondents' Dinner with President Obama, that was to occur later that evening. For all who don't know, the dinner is held to, "raise money for scholarships and honor professional recipients for journalism awards." (Washington Post) As sad as it may sound, I have never really heard much about this dinner prior to this year. The radio program discussed how it was a particularly special event this year as it was the President Obama's first dinner.  Several stars attended including comedian Wanda Sykes, Michael Steel, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Alicia Keys, and Kerry Washington, to name a few. 

   The program facilitator went on to interview another man about the large role twitter would play in the evenings events including the after-parties that would occur after the dinner. The attendees were set to tweet micro blogs of the nights happening to keep outsiders, interested fans, and those who will never experience the correspondents dinner themselves, updated and imagining they were there. 

     The talk of the use of twitter that night was with a positive tone, as if it were a really engaging and exciting component to the series of events. C-SPAN radio even posted its own twitter video links to Correspondent dinner videos and announced live video coverage of the dinner starting at 6pm for all who wanted to see. Huffington Post has also made itself available on twitter. Twitter-ers will label their tweets "#WHCA" or "#WHCD"

 C-SPAN TWITTER& HUFFINGTON POST TWITTER. 

     While I don't often give twitter is possibly due credit, I must admit that twitter has given people a new way to stay connected, to interact, and to share information, briefly and quickly. 

Will the press gather dust??

    Our latest Thursday class discussion included some interesting thoughts and questions concerning the future of newspapers. Though measures to revive and maintain newspapers are being taken, will this really help? is the lack of and demand and support for newspapers and cry for more funding or more creative measures or is it the voice of the consumer sending a non-verbal message.

   I feel as though the consumers are making it pretty clear what they want their news to be like: interactive, accessible, fast, sharable, and most importantly internet based. Personally, I am very drawn to hard-copy texts and  feel that there is something lost with text online, however there is also a substantial gain that may outshine that of a physical book or newspaper. There is something attractive and engaging about being able to pull up the news you want, when you want it and in the form in which you want it. As we discussed in class there are so many new ways to display information including things like tag clouds. This appeals to people who respond more to visual images and want a quick summary of what is going on whether it be the polls, football score, or city deaths. 

     A perfect example can be illustrated concerning the recent swine flu epidemic. While searching for information concerning the flu I found and interactive map on USA today. INTERACTIVE SWINE FLU MAP To the right is a list of deaths and symptoms and to the left the color coded map shows the world and where confirmed, expected and confirmed cases have ben found. This page is extremely useful to the user who wants to know more instantly concerning the current movement of the flu. The map is free for all to use and is sharable to keep friends and family informed. 

     This is the types of news that I believe consumers want. I don't think that all hard copy newspapers have to end however I believe many will, being replaced with new, creative, evolving platforms for new to be read and shared.

I AM REALLY GEN-Y???

In hopefully 2 hours, I will be on the road headed toward Ohio till Monday. I tried my best to ensure that everything was taken care of before I leave including stuffing wedding invitations and working on Group Projects. The real test will be to see how connected I can stay while I am out of town. I should have access to a computer while I am away, however I'm not sure how reliable. The good news for this Gen Yer is that I have instant messaging (although who really really uses IM anymore?) access to several email accounts, including Yahoo, and internet access.

Last year in my Marketing class we discussed Generation Y who is pictured as tech-savvy, casual, connected young adults.

I have never really missed school much during the semester so this will be a trial run to see how equipped I am to stay connected, or how Gen Y can I prove my self to be. If my Helio fails me does this mean I need to update to an IPhone? Or if I have to search down a public library in the area does this mean I need to trade in my Mac Mini, for a Mac Air? If I cannot find my way with Mapquest directions or simple memory, do I need to invest in a decked-out GPS system? If my radio breaks or service fails will my little i pod shuffle contain enough to keep me entertain or do I need to think about purchasing its bigger brother the Nano (which would still leave me far behind.)

I suppose this will be a good test to determine how much do I fit in with this Gen-Y group that I belong to and whether I may be lagging a bit in my use of updated technology and the experience from owning multiple "essential" gadgets. We shall see how this experiment ends next week.

After our class discussion with Asher Epstein, the Managing Director for the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship about how the process of making an idea into a useful tool that works is completed. I was curious how the internet played a role in innovation and creativity in allowing people to make something of their ideas. After doing a little searching around, I found quite a few websites that targeted people with ideas but didn't know what to do with them and websites for possible entrepreneurs.

InventHelp

Going into Business

Entrepreneurship Summer School

This idea to use the internet to become one's own boss is now new concept and just one Google search of "use the internet to start a business" yields about 86,000,000 results.

Proof

There are quite a few results for starting a business using the internet

Website like BPlans and Palo Alto offers business plans people looking for organization and the tools to run a successful business.

Who wants a SECOND LIFE?

SECOND

LIFE

Last thursday, I was able to take a little time to go into second life and to test drive it a bit. After hearing many mixed reviews about this elaborate user-controlled virtual world I was extremely curious. Naturally drawn to games that enable one to act out real-life activities, i was immediately excited to create my own name and pick my own avatar. I really liked how the appearance portion was made to adjust so many features on the avatar, that the creature resulting could look as normal or as odd as the user preferred. I ran into some problems however, from a glitch of some sort that didn't allow me to make certain changes to my avatar. I was also disappointed at how long it took me to take off an unattractive beanie off of my head. Before I begin with all the things i did not like about second life, I must admit that it has great deal of potential and the process of creating a detailed avatar with a home is something that I would enjoy. The ability to fly and to transport to different world is quite amusing and entertaining. I enjoyed how many of the items in the game were interactive however (Now for the components I did not like) I found it very hard to interact with many of the items, because I found it so difficult to even navigate my walking in the game without walking straight past something, falling off of something, or running into someone. I am no computer engineer or web specialist but from what my class members said I believe it had to do with the connection or bandwidth (What is bandwidth exactly?). After our break from Second Life, I was not able to log back in though I am not sure as to why.

The second issue that I have with second life and the #1 reason why I would not actively use the program ( the #2 reason being that I personally do not have any productive reason to use it) is that it is filled with a lot of ill-natured activity and people fulfilling fantasies they would not likely engage in if in reality.

Since second life evolves to the demands of its users, I really wonder how second life began. Was it meant to be a platform where people participated in "illegal" and sexual actions or is that something created solely by its users, branching from hidden desires that law and moral made them unable to openly engage in?

I must say that Second Life signals red warning in my opinion and while no doubt entertaining and interesting it may be it flashes red warning lights to me. Updating one's avatar is only so intriguing for so long. I would venture to say that quite a few user have "stumbled" into Second Life's red light district after subscribing with the intention to initially socialize. I feel it is a platform by which many can become corrupted by spending too much time in the game. As many older people have said, it is not good to be idle. With the exceptions of the academic and business purposed of Second Life I do not see it benefiting anyone in the long term, especially until it is more regulated.

What's the Point???

Who has ever wondered what in the world is going on with the comment section of YOUTUBE? Hundreds of pointless, cruel, advertisement-like comments combine to make a non-sensical pool of random comments that many no longer even attempt to read. At least this is what several people said in Media literacy class on Thursday. I began to search around wondering if anyone was as perplexed as myself, wondering what was the purpose of the comment section and why is it that is never seems to fulfill its seemingly conventional purpose; to critique the video.

Youtube Comments: Necessary, But Add No Value

is a blog/article by Bwana concerning Youtube comment. Bwana says, " Hardly anyone pays attention to anything prior to the last 10 comments, yet the videos with the most comments, get more views.

"What do these comments generally look like?" you ask. Well, let's take a look.

What the Comments on Youtube Really Mean

YouTube and CBS Censoring Comments

Wiki-knowledge

After a semester of stress and pushing through the period on auto-pilot, some students determine in their mind to try and enjoy and really cherish the learning they are receiving and resolve to go to class and enjoy oneself. Okay, well maybe not some people, maybe just me. I tried I did, but it only lasts a while. By week three or four with assignments rolling in and what seems like more activities in the day than hours in the day that desire to relish the learning experience dwindles and fades until the week after finals.
Though this cycle will no doubt continue I still desire to learn more and new interesting things daily. I recently discovered that my phone is formatted for Wikipedia so I have been finding myself pulling up the events that occurred in History on that particular day of the month or random articles. If I hear of a particular person in History that I don't know of I can just look up their name and know all I need. In those times of boredom when I should probably be reading for a class I can add a little tidbit to my miscellaneous bank of knowledge. I think it is a really neat tool and it is so amazing how every bit of knowledge is at the fingertips without those same fingertips at a keyboard. I feel that there no excuse for anyone with basic technology to be uninformed after they are aware of it unless they desire not to know something.

Creepy Robot

I just saw this and thought it was extremely cool and odd.
CREEPIEST ROBOT EVER

Okay so at 12:37 am
I am finding this robot pretty cool also!
LIFE-LIKEWOMANROBOT
LIFELIKEWOMANROBOT2

Check it out guys, this stuff is so NEAT! .......... and of course all possible and able to be shared through Media Platforms ; )

Tweet Tweet

TWITTER

As of Thursday 03/05/09 10:28am I am officially a twitter-er (maybe not quite the way to say it, eh?). Well actually I didn't and haven't done much yet so I guess I am not really "in" yet. To be honest it strikes me a a neat device but then almost irritates me (MyTwitterConfusion-yesyoumaylaugh) because I still don't quite get it. My lack-luster tweet record probably is very unexciting because i have no-one to tweet to.  Unlike so many others, I have not heard many striking things about twitter, nor did I know it was gathering faithful followers who were going from novice tweeters to Tweet Masters! 

   Wow! I do agree that there is something very Facebookey, and MySpace-Like like that would draw me to Twitter. I am entertained in informing people of meaningless, random facts about my thoughts, ideas, activities, and whereabouts. Though meaningless, the quirky, silly, blunt, and tell-all manner in which people tweet is still expected to create meaning and identity. All of the tweets about various tweets do merge to form an image of what one would want another to perceive them as. 

    it intrigues us to know what others are doing and to know that others care about what we are doing. The only question that I have to ask myself is, How long will Twitter last? Twitter has been around for a few years (Read It's Birth). Honestly I think Twitter would become a bore after a while, or perhaps I would force myself to stop using it when it became too time-consuming due to its lack of boredom. I am not quite sure, while I admit that twitters purpose for existence doesn't quite move me to be an avid user, there is a hint of fun and useless-usefullness that makes me not mind leaning how to use it. So..tweet on : )