Q1 - Homegrown videos

One of many widespread advertising and television techniques used today is that of producing video that looks amateurish or homegrown. Such a technique aims to display it's content as if it were displayed as an online web clip, or some source of amateur film. While it is interesting to see how such primitive video can compete with high end advertisements for valuable air times (such as during the Super Bowl), I personally do not believe it will be able to compete with the professional market in the long run. While professional productions continue to amaze more and more, homegrown videos show very little room to improve, meaning such amateurish videos are as good as their ever going to be. While professional content becomes more advanced, its value should continue to rise, while amateurish content is near its capacity to amaze.

Q2 - News Article, Tag vs Tag

The Article Im taking a look at regarding (2) is that of the upcoming availability of ipads in Australia, found here http://www.shopordrop.com.au/ipad.html.
The article revolves more around the ipad itself than on the availabillity it will have in Australia, leading me to use a majority of ipad general tags, and only one australian tag.

I would tag this Article with the following.
ipad, apple, launch, availabillity, pricing, australia, release

Delicious.com used somewhat similar tags.
apple, apps, app, store, release, date, ipad_apps, apple_ipad, ipad_release_date, ipad_release_date_australia

Some similarities in how Delicious and I tagged the article involved the corporation apple, the product ipad, and it's release.
However, while i stuck to single word tags, Delicious included sentence fragments such as "ipad_release_date", a much more specific term than my chosen "availability"

Q3 - Transparency!

Transparency is a concept used to describe how open information or motives are to an audience. How transparent something is depends on the reasons to creating that something. For example, ever find a facebooker who is constantly updating their page with everything they do? Do they personally enjoy typing up every moment of their life? or is it for social benefit that they make themselves appear to be socially involved. Bloggers may have the same mutual reward as such a facebooker, but is it also possible that career opportunity and/or money is involved with what they say. It is'nt hard to overlook the fact that some online bloggers get hundreds of thousands of views weekly. Many such blogs probably take advantage of such popularity and accept payments for writing about another company or product. It is true that Transparency lines differ from each blog, twitter, facebook, search engine, etc, but is also relevant to the offline world as well. How offline businesses and corporations operate with transparency is also just as pertaining. Say a new coke product launches with a chance for all consumers to win a million dollars. How transparent are the details about such an offer? Some similar items might add your odds of winning in a small text somewhere hidden along the product, but even still is not enough to make it seem as though "If you buy this product, you personally could have over a million dollars. For free." Perhaps such an offer triples the amount of cokes that sell. all the sudden the company is looking at billions of dollars in profit, and the slight inconvenience of having to give away a mere fraction of their gross. Such is an example of the transparent motive behind an offline source. Such motives are not always limited to money, however, and could range from social benefit, cultural benefit, or may even be straight out of good will. Such deeds are rare and hard to come by, however. The way I see it, everyone wants something.

Question 2:

"The Persuaders" starts off by evaluating just how much advertising americans are subject too throughout they're everyday lives. It is in fact an increasingly enormous amount of advertising when compared to that of even 30 years ago, though I personally do not believe it effects us as negatively as we believe it may. It almost seems that as more advertisements become available, more and more become naturally blocked out by the brain, considering them to be just hapless pieces of our environment. In my opinion, advertising today is neither to encroaching, nor too subtle, but instead at a perfect balance that allows people to still make decisions for themselves.

Because of how advertising can become ignored by our brains, businesses are developing new, more personal ways to connect to people via advertising. While it hasn't, in my opinion, reached a critical level, I feel it may soon in the future, What is to say that our brains wont then block out the majority of that content? Advertising seems to be a medium which needs to constantly adjust to our world in order to remain effective. I do not, however, feel that people are pressured any more today than people were 30 years ago, despite the fact that advertising has become much more widespread.

Digital Nations; Analysis 2

One of the most amazing things I found in finishing Digital Nations was how the encouragement of technology throughout the academic day improved the students capability to attend and thrive in class. Normally we are told by the media itself that such technology doesn't belong in the school system. However, the schools of Digital Nations portray such a drastic turn around because of technological advantages. It is important to note that not all technology can be considered harmful in an educational environment. That isn't to say that their aren't downsides to allowing middle school aged students to use laptops in the middle of class, but the pros definitely seem to outweigh the cons.
On another note, but not unlike how technology seems to be benefitting schools, is how how the people who play such games as World of warcraft and Everquest create social worlds in which they can befriend each other without ever seeing one another's face. While many people who play these games can be considered outcasts from normal day to day social groups, it seems that among their own social friends that they enjoy themselves just as much as those "in the real world". It's also interesting to note how these worlds offer distinct, new experiences, that can practically substitute their equivalents from the real world. For example, how companies now can work at virtual meeting rooms on multi-million dollar projects, and never even have seen their partner's faces. One amazing aspect of such a virtual replacement is of the air force using unmanned aircraft to strike enemy targets. Such forms of warfare seem amazingly beyond what has ever been deployed before and is only made more reliable with the fact that US troops lives aren't sacrificed. Such use of technology will only grow with time and will surely only become more amazing with time as well.

Response to Digital Nations

It is true that most children and teenagers in this day and age grow up online. Todays generation of youngsters are connected to the web 24/7 with the technologies brought along in new cell phones. Everyone, to some extent, can access nearly anyone or any pice of information from anywhere. Because of the constant communication between parties today, multitasking has become a large part of the online person's life, allowing them to check their emails, blogs, Facebooks, IM's, and websites while continuing to participate in the real world. I understand how such "living in the virtual world" led to studies of the brain, but as far as the video Digital Nations went, it seemed almost beneficial to participate in this online community.

I also have to agree with the video about how research and studies done on technology can never be 100% accurate. Technologies themselves update faster than studies can be produced, leaving most of what a particular study aims at as obsolete information that only pertains to a prehistoric form of technology.

Asian PC gaming seems to be an interesting problem that not many people in America seem to be aware of. Its difficult to acknowledge nations of people far worse off than our own in regards to virtual living, but seeing how some Japanese PC cafes were run, you can feel a sort of empathy for the kids hooked to the a virtual life. The addiction camps seem a step in the right direction. The emphasis on recovering a lost childhood seems like a good method to reconnect these people to the real world.

Computer Supported Collaboration- Using applications or websites to connect and share ideas with others using the same program.

Web Apps- Applications which are embedded into a users web browser, accessed through websites.

Long Tail- The profitable approach of selling less popular items in smaller quantities.

Network as Platform- Content created via the internet (Website, web app, or other)

Blogs- Web page which is maintained by (generally) one person and is updated with news or information.

Syndication- Process of accessing information from one website through other websites.

Mass Collaboration- Information or media created and/or accessed by a mass group of people.

Mashups- The blending of two or more songs to create a hybrid song.

User Generated Content- Media that is created by anyone, not limited to professionals.

Hosted Services- Business's or companies which deals with online services, such as data storage.

Social Software- Software that connect different users and enables data sharing.

Video Sharing Sites- Businesses, companies, or websites of which anyone can upload videos. Example: Youtube

Wikis- Web pages in which anyone can edit and share information on.

Folksonomy- Organizing online data into groups and subgroups by tagging.