Sonoma State Star: Profile of Anny To

Anny To makes a name for herself through photography

CISPA Article

I break down what the deal is with CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act)

Tumblr

Tumblr is an online blogging service that is somewhere between Facebook and Blogger.  It basically uses the format of Facebook posts. The only real major difference is that Tumblr primarily a blogging site, as opposed to being a social communications site. So otherwise, blogger is focused more on content then friends, though you can still follow them if you wish of course.  The great thing about blogger is that there are so many customizable features. Your profile can be designed to your exact specifications with HTML formatting how MySpace profiles are.  I enjoy this blogging format much better then blogger because you can view multiple blogs from different users at once, as opposed to blogger, where you may only view one blog at a time. This is a more efficient way of disseminating information browsing blogs.

There are many limits to Tumblr on how much you can post. Only 10MB of music a day, only 100 over all, and only 75 pictures are a few examples. This is done in an effort to stop spam. But this also hampers those who use it a lot.

Each user has their own person blog profile that they make. Once on your dashboard you have the choice in posting text, photo, quotes, links, audio, and video just like Facebook. It is very straight forward and simple. Not much really else to say except that I like this format of reading blogs better.

Sonoma State Star: Review "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded"

Lewd Minaj is not so lady-like in “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded”

Under the Blue Arch

As I was watching TV on Hulu.com I came across a very interesting advertisement campaign for Chevrolet dealerships titled “Under the Blue Arch” referring to a blue arch that is part of the dealer ship. This ad campaign sparked my interest because it focuses mainly on the dealers that are working at the dealership rather than the actual cars.

In these Chevy commercials they use a blatant office type parody about the funny shenanigans of the staff. In fact, one of the first videos in the YouTube web series make reference to The Office, with the manager saying, after a Nerf “pre-work teamwork building exercise” fire fight, that there should be a TV show made about them. The rest of the team nodes and agrees with the manager basically sucking up, while one employee speaks up “I think they already have a lot of shows like that. I watch them on Thursday.” He is dismissed by his coworkers being told that he needs to be a team player. There is no mention of the cars being sold other than showing them as the staff plays around them as part of their “teambuilding exercise.”

Some of the other commercials are like this. It barely registers as a commercial and more like a quick sketch show. They do work information on the cars into most the commercial but it’s only a small piece like it is Truck Month and not going into detail about it.

This campaign caught my eye because of the tactics these advertisements are trying to sell cars with. Now it is not just about the product, it’s more about the people. But is this correct? Does focusing on the people the right way to sell these cars? Yes and no I say. Yes because times are tough in America, buying an American car means you are supporting you buds at the local Chevy dealer as well as the workers at the plant where it was made. That is honestly the first impression I got from this advertisement. That I would be helping out the cool funny people. On the other had it completely distracts from the purpose of buying a quality vehicle. The cars are not really fulfilling any need like products in other advertisements. They act more like props or set pieces used for exposition and are secondary to the actors. I think it confuses the point. But it does make for some fun and light hearted entertainment. They even have their own jingle that introduces each character.

In the end it is still clever and still did its job of marketing the company. It sparked my interest enough to check out the YouTube page Under the Blue Arch. Now I am aware that it is in fact Truck Month, and about some of the features that Chevy cars have to offer. And knowing is half the battle in anything Right?

Community Ken Burns

On a recent Community episode (S3 Ep14), the show parodies Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary with a Greendale Community College Pillow Fight Mocumentory.  The Ken Burns documentary is a comprehensive nine episode series that should be shown in ever high school in America. This, while always hilarious, is also one more example of the ground breaking way Community shows us the mediate forms in which we communicate and experience the world today, in context to this episode, as compared to say Civil War Times.

I also can play violin theme, Ashokan Farewell that plays throughout the the episode. It’s a rustic soulful melody.

To set this up for those who do not follow the show, Troy and Abed start another whimsical hi-jinx of building a huge pillow fort in the school. Dean Pelton encourages the pair telling them about a world record. Troy wants to go for the record and to use blankest to cover ground. Abed, in his true to character neurosis, sees blankets as mediocrity, along with some egging on of Vice Dean of the Air conditioner Repair School cameo, John Goodman, he stands against the blanket fort from taking up enough room in the college to set the record. The fight is on! 

Community many times switches its format mainly to Mocumentory, but also other like animation, and clamation. This is how it is able to parody the many different ways in which 21st century first world people experience the world. This pillow fight is documented in several different ways. Through in person interviews with the characters involved, cell phone videos, text message conversations, Facebook posts, emails an others. I would ask for you to take a moment and consider what it would have been like if all these technologies were around during the Civil War era. All we have to go off of are recounts of the people who are there and through on new form of media photographs.  But if we had that type of the digital documentation, imagine what kind historical insights that we could have gleamed from it. From watching this episode I can see this digital documentation happening in the modern world now.

But what does this all mean? It means that that as new media makes communication ever more accessible and convenient, greater is our ability to see and better understand the world around us. Take for example the scene in which the war breaks out between the two factions. It is documented on a cell phone because more people carry camera phones as opposed to an actual camera. If this type of technology did not exist there may have been no way to show what was going on, unless someone had a traditional camera which is much less uncommon because they are less convenient.

I mention this because I want to draw a parallel to the shooting of Oscar Grant, which was a tragedy that would have never been exposed without the use of camera phones. Rodney King was lucky because a camera was present in that situation. Who knows how many instances like that may have happened before it was caught on tape. Now with the convenience of camera phone nothing noteworthy can happen without digital documentation of it. It makes me think twice about doing just about anything as I consider this blog post.

Community’s clever writing and staging of situation makes me consider things that I would not normally think about. This episode makes me consider wonder about the untold stories of the Civil War.  I hope you will consider what I have written here and look at community 

Pinterest

Whenever I find an image online I like and want to hold on to I save it to my hard drive. The problem with this is it just takes up space and my friend will never know about it unless I upload it to Facebook. Now with Pintrest I can save all my favorite images and videos online in a way that shares them with my friends and makes it easy to organize.  Apart from saving precious free space on my hard drive free, this also acts as a backup in case where my computer where ever to crash and I lost all my data.

Here is how it works. When you are surfing the web and come upon an image or video you would like to save you click a widget in you favorites. Pintrest then opens a secondary page with all the video’s and images of that URL mapped out in a grid. You select the image or images that you like, add a caption, and then pin it to a specific board in your profile.

Boards are the way you organize you images on Pintrest. Each has a name, description and pertains to usually a somewhat specific subject. For myself I have boards like Sci Fi and My Politics. Once you pin something it will show up in a feed like Facebook of recent posts. Here it shows the image or video, your caption, and what board you pinned it to. Users also have the option of letting others post on their boards. This is a wonderful collaborative feature. There is a repin option where you can take an image that you like and post it to one of your own boards.  It will then say you name via another user. This is a great way to follow new people with similar interests as you. One of the best features of Pintrest is the ability to either follow everything a person pins, or only specific boards that they pin to. This is very useful because, for example, many girls like to use Pintrest to keep track of fashion and shopping. I do not necessarily have an interest in this, so in order to keep my feeds relevant to only my interest I can choose to follow specific boards of my female friends and not follow those that I would not look at anyway. Another great aspect of Pinterest is that they it can also double as an image hosting site. Boards are basically albums.

Pinterest provides the first real internet cutting board. Instead of cutting out pages of interior design magazines or downloading images to a folder, you can pin it to a board. The same can be done for a number of jobs such as event planning. It is a great way to compile ideas together. Very basic and simple idea applied to a digital format. Perfect.

Revised Senior Project Proposal

My first senior project, which was to create a science fiction film, has come to a screeching halt. Throughout the course of this process I have hit one obstacle after another. Creating the simple light saber props put me behind because of the lack of access to tools. I would not be able to implement a green screen idea I had for the studio because the lights were too orange. Over the spring break I failed to get even some of the basics shots due to the lack of actors and extras being present because of conflicting schedules or lack of interest. In addition the SSU-TV studio does not in fact possess a copy of After Effects, the software necessary to animate the light saber effect. Do to all of these reasons; I unfortunately do not believe that I will be able to complete my original proposal anymore. I submit this second proposal.

During this semester my senior seminar and public relations teachers have been doing their best to prepare me for the professional world, through anecdotes of their past experiences, as well as tips on what employers are looking for. This has given me a better view of what my strengths in communications are, and what I need to polish up on in order to put forth my best possible work. For this reason I believe that my time is better spent creating my own personal blog where I can express my opinions and views to the world at large on a variety of issues.

Throughout my college years I have come to understand myself better. I have a natural compulsion to stay informed about the goings on of the world and have a ravenous appetite for consuming all other forms of media. These are aspect of my personality I can harness to a more creative end with my senior project.

This will provide educational experiences such as managing my own online publication; improve upon my writing and grammar skills, as well as being able to express my own abstract notions and ideas about the media and modern culture. Through repetition and practice, I will develop my ideas and arguments, and better express and articulate concisely through writing.

In writing this blog, I will be better prepared to work in this field due to the fact it will give me an opportunity to consider the many different aspects relate to each specific topic. This will possibly give me an advantage in the professional world; much like the anecdote Calovita told the class in which a former student prevented his company from taking on a project that most likely would be a detriment to the organization through the use of a properly worded memo.

For the next month I plan on filling my blog with content about current issues related to the media as well as journaling about my experiences in the Communications Studies department at Sonoma State. I have many other projects that I am currently working on in school. I can update my blog about and explain in great detail. Reflecting upon what I have done, and what I could do better next time is a great learning experience. I am currently, this semester, writing for the Sonoma State Star, event planning for the First Annual Sonoma State Movie Festival, and planning a public relations campaign for the YMCA of Marin, among other things. The way I see it, history is made every day. Through media and digital documentation we are able to have a better record of that history. I can be a part of that.

How we are affected by media information and how it is coming at us are comprehensive questions that I hope to explore in the blog. The ability to take theses individual, small in the grand scheme, but significant instances and be able to study, and discuses them intellectually on an open format of a blog will further my educational experience and make me a more intellectually dynamic individual.

Short Film April 3rd

Today we began filming for our latest short movie. We went out to a jogging path by Spring Lake in Santa Rosa. It was really windy so we picked up a lot of white noise on the microphone. We are most likely going to have to scratch the audio in the editing process. Another problem we ran into the the surplus of people on the path. We had to do a lot of waiting for people to pass.
In the scene today we are establishing that the main character, played by Tommy Franich, has killed a cyclist, played by Derrick Carbiener, when he throws his beer bottle over his shoulder. He proceeds to hide the body under a tree and rides off with his victims bike.

Unfortunately there was also a hic-up with the bike which became completely unusable towards the end of filming. Now in order to get the shots that we need, we will have to return to the location at a different time to finish. Here is a pic of one of my group members trying to get the bike wheel unbent for the last scene of the day to no avail.

All in all we got most of the shots that we needed to get done and we only had to break four beer bottles in order to do that.

Grindr

      In the last few months I have been enjoying my new smart phone powered by the Google android software. This device, beyond versatile, has many apps that assist me in getting work done, as well as giving me an excuse for prolonged procrastination. The single biggest “time waiting” application that I have found myself on all the time is Grindr.

      Grindr for those who don’t know is a dating application for gay men. The user creates a profile with the sections for blurbs and about, as well as basic stats. There is even a place on the profile to link to other social networking sights. Upon completion, your profile is shown next to others in your area using GPS locating. This is call geosocial networking. It allows for the user to connect and engage with others in their immediate area as well as the outlining regions. As you move your profile will periodically update your location showing you new guys in the area. On Grindr you can text chat with other profiles, send pictures, and maps of the area around you.  The Grindr app is a free to use and when you first download it you get five days of Grindr Xtra. Xtra is the subscription the user buys if they wish to access the advanced features, mainly the ability to load up to 200 profiles and being able to quickly swipe through profiles.

      This application has won several awards in January 2011, the award for "Best Mobile Dating Site" at the iDate Awards. January 2012 Grindr announced it was named the winner of Tech Crunch’s 2011 Crunchies Award for Best Location Application. It is the most popular gay dating application available.

      The reason Grindr is so popular is due to the fact it provides a meeting place for people to declare themselves in a discreet way. A user is not even required to use their face. Some instead decide to use headless shots or of scenery. This is a kind of a godsend to closeted and down low gay men.

      There is a saying “the gay bar is dead, the internet killed it” I would agree with that statement to a point. Back in the days of the Stonewall Inn LGBT people did not have public ways of meeting people of their particular persuasion, because it was not socially accepted. As a result they were shunned to places like the Stonewall which were run buy the mob, who had a nice arrangement with the police when they wanted to crack down on “deviancy.” Fast forward to the present where mainstream society is tolerant if not accepting of nontraditional sexuality and we still have bars where these types of people can meet. Now they are run for the people buy the people. But now, just like how certain message boards became a meeting place for reality television fans, we now come to a whole new platform where an entire community can now interact on. This is how the internet in collaboration with the free market services the needs of particular demographic.

      I believe that Grindr, and applications like them, will change how the next generation dates and finds partners gay or straight. The company has already launched a sister application called Blendr for people of all sexual orientations. This is especially useful to gay people who live in small towns or have the obstacle of ascertaining if others “play on your team.” Many people already date on the internet and the number will only continue to rise with the more options technology provides.

      Grindr has just celebrated its 3^rd Anniversary it has spawned several lookalike apps such as Jack’d, Boy Ahoy, and Scruff. This is only one examples of the use of geosocial networking. Other app developers have been and are currently working to include geosocial networking to their product whenever possible, as often as possible. The uses for this technology are only limited by our imagination it seems. For now I will have to just learn self control and discipline when it comes to Grindr as well as other applications on my smartphone.

      A perfect parody of how Grindr changes our behavior. Davy Wavy shows what if guys acted the same way in real life as they do on Grindr.