the digital haze.

Image via CrunchBase

youtube is a central part of many of our lives, sad as that may be. it's incredibly easy to squander away hours looking at ridiculous videos of dogs singing and hamsters on pianos, and we rely heavily (though certainly not legally) on it for episodes of our favorite tv shows.

youtube has taken off rapidly; it started in 2005, with the first uploaded video being "me at the zoo" uploaded by the site's founder, jawed karim.



the site has created these online celebrities and the phenomenon of "viral videos" because they spread like a virus. but with success comes competition, and this has come primarily in the form of hulu.

hulu is a commercially-supported video hosting site that posts videos from networks like nbc and fox. the advantage to hulu is that the videos are of much higher quality and can be expanded without losing an picture quality. the major downside is the lack of options as far as which shows are provided.

i don't think that hulu will really pose any serious threat to youtube. youtube will always be the epitome of stupid video humor (with collegehumor coming in second), and it will always feature copyrighted shows it's not supposed to, because it's so difficult to monitor what gets uploaded.

in short, the end of youtube is not near. but it will be interesting to see where it will go from this point.

Image via Wikipedia

kindle is something i've heard of, moreso now that i'm in college, but have never really seriously looked at. for those of us who are blissfully unaware, kindle is basically an electronic device which you can download electronic "book files" onto and read, in lieu of paper publications.

novel idea. that being said, apple has already allegedly begun designing a rival product, deemed the "mediapad" by many tracking its potential development. the mediapad is pretty much a larger ipod touch, with the electronic book capacity. the screen would be larger than the kindle since and the touch screen feature would allow for the elimination of the keyboard from the device, but it would be smaller in physical size than the kindle. the only downside is that it would most likely be more expensive than the $350 kindle device.

i have to say, apple is awesome at coming up with fantastic new ideas, as well as improving upon previous media devices. smaller, more lightweight, and generally more convenient seem to be the trademarks of the apple label.

along with the new-and-improved mediapad, there has been talk about a new smaller, less expensive version of the iphone, dubbed "iphone lite", likely increasing the popularity of the already hot item. even more than this is the discussion of a possible collaboration between apple and verizon to create another version of the iphone (being sure not to break any alliances with the original host network of the iphone, at&t).

i think this would open up an entirely new and HUGE opportunity for apple. verizon is a gigantic network, and i know that i personally know more people (including myself) that have verizon than any other network. not to mention, spreading the product across two network lines would be an incredibly smart move, since it would allow people to continue their existing plan, but with a better product.

well done, apple. revolutionizing the media and technology all the time. while these products are all tentative and have yet to come to fruition, if they are released, i think they will prove to garner an enormous market. i'm pretty sure apple is set to dominate the market for a while.

i can't believe i haven't posted about this before, but i wanted to discuss something VERY near and dear to my heart:

threadless.

threadless is...amazing. basically, it's a t-shirt printing company (skinnycorp) that prints designs submitted by users based on the ratings they receive from the "threadless community" of registered users.

absolutely anyone can submit as long as the design is original. there are guidelines about what can be submitted like number of colors, certain messages, etc, but generally it's a pretty open forum.

and the designs aren't necessarily submitted as absolute finals, either. many users submit potential designs, get feedback, edit the design, and re-submit it to be voted on again.

this is a great example of collaboration between users in an online community to create a product that benefits all. the user gets the fame of having their design printed (as well as $2000 and a $500 gift certificate to the store), the company makes a profit, and the site's users get t-shirts that they voted on and like. it's a simple concept, just stepped up to make it as easy as possible.

i don't see the success of threadless stopping anytime soon. while the shirts range from around $15-25 at full price, they still sell like hotcakes. (and sometimes you can get ahold of them for $5-10 during clearance sales.) i've been known to browse designs for hours, and the 15-20 shirts currently hanging in my closet are proof that i just can't get enough of those witty, whimsical, sometimes ridiculous designs.

collaboration, folks! gotta love it.

i'm going to frame this post around something i'm pretty familiar with, and what a good amount of my time on blogger is spent doing--style blogging.

it may seem a little silly at first, but blogging is a great way for those interested in fashion to connect and share ideas, inspiration, and thoughts on anything new coming down the runways.

most of the posts generally consist of a combination of text and images, with the images being the focus of each entry. the blog posters typically include things like photos that inspire them (like this one from sea of shoes):



or feature outfits assembled by the posters themselves (like this one from karla's closet):



style blogging has really picked up momentum and with magazines like teen vogue and glamour featuring stories on it, will likely continue to rise in popularity. it gives people from all over the world and of all ages a place to discuss something that interests them and that they deal with every day--fashion.

one of my favorites to read is a blog called style rookie. it's written by a 12-year-old girl named tavi, and she puts together some of the craziest and most interesting get-ups. here she is (she's adorable!):



young creativity at its finest.

this social phenomenon is great way for people to connect and gives those who don't live in fashion capitals like new york or l.a. a chance to take part in the world of fashion innovation. it's particularly useful for anyone interested in diy fashion (such as myself) since many of the bloggers are extremely creative with the shapes and combinations they create.

overall, i think the future is bright for style blogging, and i think it will continue to garner attention as the fashion world becomes less about trends and more about innovation.

sorry for the lag time; we're n00bz at this!

Image via Wikipedia

i'm a regular subscriber to the relevant podcast put out by relevant magazine. they were doing their regular "slices" feature where they talk about something weird or neat that they've come across in the past week, and they mentioned something that made me sit there kind of awestruck.

you can switch ipod tracks with the raise of an eyebrow. an eyebrow!

it's a little device that looks like headphones, but actually measures tiny movements inside your ear to trigger controls you pre-set, like skipping an ipod track. it can be controlled by anything you set it to like sticking out your tongue:



or wiggling your nose, smiling, winking, frowning, anything! smiling's probably a bad call though; who wants to be abruptly stopped every time they hear a song that makes them happy?

anyway, i thought this was a really tech-y, futuristic-y, ridiculous-y thing. and i'd really like one! but how lazy are we getting that we've come to the point where pressing a button is too much work? and i don't know if i want something that controlling anywhere near my brain. anyone seen the animorphs? you know what i'm talking about...

Image by dave_mcmt via Flickr

this is not a joke; that's actually the name.

i was looking around for advances in technology in public schools, and i found new media high school. it's a charter school in philadelphia specializing in, what else, new media. the curriculum is based primarily around digital multimedia and project-based learning, intended to give students skills that will be of greater benefit to them in their professional lives.

their aim is to go beyond the textbook-memorization study techniques of the past and teach to students to be actively engaged in the problems they are presented with and think critically about solutions.

while it might sound simple enough, it's actually a pretty innovative form of pedagogy. i think you'd be hard-pressed to find many teachers who would be able to conform to this method, though i think it might benefit the students.

this discovery mainly made me wonder; what is the future of technology in regard to education? we already have distance-learning programs, but will there ever be a program in place for the majority of public school students to opt for such? and also, what will this mean for certain classes where experience is imperative? as an undergrad studying art education, this is a real concern. when will conveniences and "inter-connectedness" online begin to overtake the real-life interconnectedness that interaction provides?

Image via CrunchBase

the "face" of facebook seems to be changing at a very rapid pace. i logged on the other day and noticed the new format and could only think of one thing: twitter.

i started my twitter account a few weeks before the class set them up, and i have to admit, i didn't really know what to do with it. not many of my friends have twitter accounts, so it didn't seem all that useful. since then, more and more people and organizations are getting twitter accounts, and it's made the site make a little more sense to me.

but back to facebook...what? the format was really confusing at first, and i'm still not a very big fan of it. the wall posts, status updates, and everything is just thrown in together with no graphic notation of what's what. i think the main reason this re-design took place is because the folks at facebook are noticing that twitter is picking up speed.

most of us have such short attention spans that we now only want to receive updates and information in a single line. we skim over blogs and disregard anything that's too long. i myself am guilty of this; if anyone posts a blog that is somewhat lengthy, i have to be pretty interested in whatever it is that they're talking about to read through the whole thing.

while i appreciate twitter and its simplicity, i'm kind of appalled at our lack of focus. and i also think that facebook should do its own thing and not attempt to replicate the format of another popular website.

Image by Davezilla was taken via Flickr

testing out the zemanta...

this is wicked awesome!

in other news, i found this neat article involving twitter.

a guy from the baltimoremd twitter account got the twitter "fail whale" a bunch of natty boh heads tattooed on his leg to promote the city's twitter account.

i'd say that's new level of dedication.

Image via Wikipedia

last blog, i talked about the effect of technology on the world of photography, and this time i'd like to continue on the topic of technology and art. another area where art and technology have merged is in the development of graphic design.

the number of people involved in the graphic design community has increased steadily over the past few years. companies are becoming more and more reliant on graphic design as they begin to emphasize marketing and promotion. but along with this string of creative professionals comes a new breed of artsy imitators. it seems like every teenage kid with a copy of adobe photoshop is now a "graphic designer", and i think it really takes some of the credibility away from the real artists.

along those lines, i wanted to discuss the issue of vector images. vector images are images created using mathematical formulas to generate shapes and designs that are easily manipulated and re-sized in graphics programs. they make designing layouts and images with multiple layers much easier on the designer. however, there are many instances of graphic designers who use only vector images and don't utilize drawn images at all. in fact, some graphic designers don't have artistic drawing skills at all!

personally, i feel like a "graphic artist" should be just that. an artist who works with graphics. while i understand that utilizing vector images is a huge benefit to most graphic designers, i think that a certain level of artistic skill should still be necessary. when graphic designers no longer need this level of skill i think it undermines their importance and talent.

Image via Wikipedia

technology is influencing our lives in so many ways, and it is affecting aspects of every subject and discipline. something i wanted to touch on was how technology and media are affecting the art world. two primary areas have been affected most in the last two decades or so: photography and graphic design.

in high school, i took four years of photography; three of darkroom and one of digital. over the course of my time studying the subject, i noticed an increasing emphasis on the digital side of things. in high schools (and even in colleges), darkroom photography is being phased out.

kodak has stopped making photo paper for darkroom developing, thus the price of photo paper is increasing, and schools are becoming less and less willing to accommodate for building darkrooms and disposing of hazardous chemicals used in the developing process.

personally, while the phasing out of traditional photography and introduction of digital photography makes sense economically and ecologically, i think there's something to be said for traditional photography. i much preferred my years in traditional photography to the one i spent doing digital. i think there's more of a sense of personal accomplishment that goes into taking photos, developing the film, enlarging the image, and having the technique and skill to refine the photograph. in digital photography, there aren't those little quirks that make a roll of film interesting like accidental reticulation (look it up, it's a neat technique!).

in short, digital photography is neat, convenient, and generally cheaper. but traditional is still my personal favorite. it's a labor intensive project, but you can really be proud of what you've done when it's finished.

Image via Wikipedia

wednesday morning i logged onto facebook and was immmediately presented with a message about how the site was returning to its original terms of use because its recent revision was causing such an uproar with users.

i'll be honest, i didn't even know they had revised the dang thing. realizing this, and the fact that i had no idea what facebook's policy was involving what they could do with my image/information, i decided to probe further.

first of all, i was surprised to find out that if you are under 18 and not enrolled in high school or college, you are violating the terms of use! who'dda thunk it?

also, i chuckled at the rule about not creating false representations and impersonating other people. i tested this out by searching for lauren conrad (of laguna beach and the hills fame) and promptly received 10 different people with "lauren conrad" profiles within the first few pages.

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof..."

i must admit, the above statement is a little frightening. not enough so to prevent me from using the site, but knowing that a company has every right to use photos of my friends and i to advertise without notice is a little disconcerting.

"we do not screen or approve Developers". yep, that's what they said. basically, all of those nifty applications you add are totally unregulated. scary stuff.

"When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments." what i'd like to know is who gets to determine the appropriate amount of time to memorialize someone who has died? i feel like this is probably outside of the scope of a social networking site.

after reviewing facebook's terms of use and their policies on privacy and things of that nature, i've realized that it's really worthwhile to read these documents before getting involved. i know that it's a big pain and most of us just don't want to take the time to filter through seemingly useless information, but it may just be worth it to see how much of your "virtual rights" you're surrendering.

keep that in mind the next time you blindly click the "i have read and agree to..." button.

a quick trip to www.ruckus.com swiftly kicks you in the face with this little gem.

ruckus was a music service intended for college students which allowed you to access over 3 million songs legally and for free. the catch? you couldn't load them to any portable music player.

the main reason i'm bringing this up is that last friday, ruckus network, inc. shut down the service without warning to anyone, including the university. the diamondback recently published an article about the closing, which is where i heard about this.

the article highlighted that many students either weren't aware of the service or felt that the inability to transfer music made it an inconvenient way to listen. personally, i had forgotten about it; the university advertised it, but with the rise of sites like www.playlist.com, it hardly seemed worth the effort of registration and all that hooplah.

to get to my main point, music sharing sites continue to gain popularity and continue to face hurdles. i remember way back in the day when napster began its steep rise to fame and subsequent plummet into obscurity once legalities were thrown in the mix. i'm a big advocate of legal sharing and downloading of music. i completely understand that we're poor college students and music is just too dang expensive. but at the same time, i have far too many musician friends who rely on music sales in order to continue being able to do so.

i'm not sure what the next phase of music sharing will be, but at present file sharing and streaming sites seem to be a big source of joy (for those who seek free access to new and underground music) and frustration (for those who rely on its sales, as well as the riaa).