Podcasts and Vidcasts

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.

Smitty

Google Reader

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.

Smitty