The mashing websites for the most part I thought were quite useless, but I thought two of them were fun. The one where you draw something in the box and the site try's to guess what you were drawing by showing you pictures, and the one where you play a picture form of sudoku with someone elses pictures, I thought were a great ideas; and here is the sudoku one: http://www.beckysweb.co.uk/sudoku/flickrsudoku.asp Of course, websites such as google maps are not useless, they use many other sources to create what in many cases is very important information, such as directions to one place or another.
Last but not least, the interactivity, I thought was a great time, and very easy to use. I really like bighugelabs.com for this reason. It was a really fun time making many different pictures, and playing around. I think the best application for this type of thing is also presentations, such as slide shows. It can keep the audience entertained and their focus on you, which is what you need to do today with everyone having such a short attention span. Here are three of my favortie pictures from this activity:
Well, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my blog and I hope you enjoyed it...have a great day.
My first experience with podcasts, and vidcasts began very slowly and I got quite annoyed with it. I was told in my computer science class to use iTunes or podcastalley.com, so I decided to try podcastalley. I had heard so much about iTunes, I figured I would try to learn about something new. When I started out, it went ok, I searched for a couple of podcasts that I thought I would like, and I tried to subscribe to them, and this is when the trouble came. It told me to downlaod an aggregator, so I began the process, and it seemed to be working. But when I tried to follow the rest of the steps that the website provided, I couldn't figure out how to listen to the podcasts. It might have been a brain cramp on my part, but I just couldn't figure it out, so I downloaded another aggregator... unfortunately the results stayed the same. After I did all of this, I went to iTunes and it was much easier. Once I was onto iTunes, and surfing through podcasts, I really enjoyed it. A couple of the podcats I listened to were: WingsCast, and Global National podcast with Kevin Newman. WingsCast is a specific podcast geared towards news and information on the Detroit Red Wings of the NHL. This particular podcasts was very interesting to me because my favorite sports team is the Red Wings and I love hearing about whats going on with them. The second podcast was exactly what the title implies, it was the news of the day, anchored by Kevin Newman. Both of these podcasts were nice to listen to and I think I will definately do it again, however I would only use this method vs a newspaper in certain cases. I like to have the pictures, and the solid text infront of me when all I am doing is getting the news, but when I was listening to the podcast I was also doing some other work on my laptop. To be able to hear the news and at the same time do my work was a nice feeling. When I am reading a newspaper or watching t.v it is hard to multi-task because I am to focused on the pictures or videos. Podcasts can also be used for audiobooks which to me is a great idea. I find it very hard to sit down and read a book, I would much rather be outside doing something or watching/listening to something. I truly believe that if I could get all of my books in audio, I would know them much better then I would from reading them. They are also a wonderful thing for the blind. For a blind person to read a book, they need to be able to read braille, and many can't or just don't want to. The audiobook is a great alternative for this situation. They can just sit down and listen to someone else read it to them. I think it is a wonderful thing overall. My vidcasts experience was nothing but fun. I had a great time searching through iTunes for interesting vidcasts and a couple of the ones I found were: Journey to the Cup, and CH Originals: College Humour Original Videos. The Journey to the Cup vidcast was about a couple of them teams who were in the NHL playoffs last year. It showed some of their highlights from their season and played some music. The collge humour vidcasts was a number of dumb skits that were not very funny but extremely stupid, so they were fun to watch. I thought vidcasts were a great way to get news and information because they are short, concise and there are no comercials. For this reason I thought that the vidcasts were better then newspapers or even some t.v shows, and I will certainly use it again. The youtube and google video section of the assignment I was fairly farmiliar with before I started. Youtube and google video are large enterprises in my opinion because there is such a large variety of videos on them, there seems to be a video for any and every person out there. You can watch music videos, comedy routines, religious sermans, and even some movies. I watched Shawshank Redemption on it just the other day. For this assignment I looked through many videos and one of the ones that stuck out to me was this one, I thought it was great :
I hope you thoroughly enjoyed this blog, have a great day.
Using google reader for the first time was an interesting experience. It was a very handy tool because it brought the most recent news right infront of you without you needing to do anything. Another nice thing was it was fairly easy to learn how to use. Right when I opened the google reader link for the first time there was an intro video teaching me the basics of using it. The main thing to do with this application is to subscribe to websites feeds, and there are a number of ways to do that. One way is to use there search bar to find the website you would like to subscribe to or just the type ie. "nhl.com" or "news" respectively. Once the search engine finds the appropriate website it is as easy as clicking on the subscribe button under each of the websites url's on the list. Another way to do it is to go right to your favortie websites and click directly onto the orange feed button (if the website has one). And the third way to subscribe to a websites feed is to simply copy the web address into the subscription field in your reader account. This technology can be useful in the right circumstances. If I am just going to news sites and things like that then it is great because the newest stuff is always right infront of you and there is no need to go searching. But in my case I love to play old games and look at scores from sporting events, it is not the greatest tool. They don't normally post scores of games on reader so I have to go to the website anyway, and if I want to play a game that isn't brand new then the reader doesn't help with that either. All in all, it kind of depends on what kind of internet user you are for using reader. For me personally I don't like it much becasue it doesn't help with what I do. I like to go all over sites and look at many things, and google reader does not help with that. It was however fun to get to know how to use the new technology, and it was very easy to learn the ropes. I would recommend people try it because it could make surfing the net a lot easier for certain people.
Hello, and welcome to the experience of a life time...ok not quite, but it is my first blog so cut me some slack. I have been reading a couple of blogs lately that include one for the Detroit Red Wings, the Mac blog, and a blog written by Gilbert Arenas (a NBA player) and they are definitely very different. The Red Wings blog talks of news, but only news to do with that particular team. For example the most recent post was about them signing one of their players to a 12 year contract. This can be very exciting for some people that follow the team or the NHL quite a bit, but for someone who doesn't care for the team or the sport, they probably won't care one bit about how much some hockey player is making to play a game. The blog for Macintosh is quite different in genre, but has a similar structure. It strictly (from what I saw) reported on what is going on in the world of Mac's, and for someone who doesn't have a Mac or doesn't care what kind of computer they have, it is pointless to read this particular blog. Why read something when it doesn't affect you directly is quite often the mind set of people, but for some, it is an amazing site and they want to read it thoroughly. The Gilbert Arenas blog is a little different from the previous two because he doesn't exactly report news of any importance to many. He talks about anything he wants to, including him doing a dunk off of a trampoline, because he thought the guys who were doing it couldn't do it right. His blog entries are much more orientated to telling everyone what he did that day or what rumours are swirling about him. What do I think about the future of blogging? I haven't had much experience with blogging but, I think blogging has its place in the world. I think it can be very beneficial in many ways, and I think it is a great thing to do just to relax sometimes. For many people I'm sure it is a waste of time, but I know for me personally I love reading the news of the Red Wings. It all depends on what interests you. Do I think it will replace news casts or something that drastic? No way! They seem to be becoming more and more popular but many of them are not reliable in any way for reporting on world news. I personally have had a lot of fun making this first blog and creating it to fit my personality, and blogger.com has made it extremely easy to do as well. I didn't have the slightest problem adding a gadget or puting in a picture, or anything. It has been a pleasant experience so far, and who knows how far I will take it... From what I have learned, Twitter just seems to be a different form of msn messenger. People go onto twitter to have a real time conversation with someone else. Which is exactly what msn messenger is. Now I don't know if I missed something, which is a strong possibility but in my opinion blogging and twitter can't exactly be compared like I have been asked to do. I have been asked to say which one I think is better, but how do you compare the two? One is a real time conversation and one is essentially an article in which anyone can read and the author can write his or her thoughts and feelings without necessarily telling one certain someone. They appear to be to different to determine which is better then the other. It all depends on the person, and what they want out of it. If you want to find out whats going on in someones life but your not able to get a hold of them, read their blog (like Gilbert's). But if you just want to know what your friend is doing for supper, use twitter. So anyway, I hope you have enjoyed the journey into my head, please come back for more.
I am a 20 year old student at Trent University, dating a beautiful 19 year old woman. I love hanging out with friends and playing as many sports as I can. I work part time at Sobey's and I am a Christian.
