Well I happened to find this in the Miami Herald, an article written by Edward Wasserman that goes into detail about how the new generation of the media is both a blessing and a curse. One of the questions he asks, in relation to the Steve Jobs fiasco earlier this month “is CNN on firm ethical ground nurturing, promoting and lending its immense prestige to a site whose content it does nothing to ensure conforms to even minimal standards of accuracy?” Also in the article, Wasserman is arguing the points that someone, an undergrad from NYU who blasted the teaching of a professor in one of her courses, who posted on the MediaShift blogrun by PBS.org, violated the code of ethics many journalists, by not identifying herself as a reporter for anyone, and then posting her findings on MediaShift.
He does make a very good counter argument in his article stating that how would this be any different than say if a teacher that was teaching the class and reported on a similar site about the problems he has with his students (Wasserman), and in a way I see exactly where he is coming from with that analogy. The fact that the girl is doing this without approval or endorsement of the professor himself or the university of which she is a student at definitely gives some credibility towards the Professor’s comments. However, the only way it seems in this society to get any case of information is to have those that are imbedded in certain situations. I will say that it doesn’t seem to me that a student at New York University would all of a sudden type inflammatory, unsubstantiated claims about their class and the teaching therein.
True there are sites like ratemyteachers.com , but I site like that can have any kind of comments made, and who know whether or not they are substantiated. Someone who had a bad experience about the teaching on the class can go into there and just put any random comment on there, and depending on who the guy talks to, rumors could easily get spread about the teacher in question. I don’t think that Alana Taylor, the undergrad from NYU in question, would stoop so low to post inflammatory remarks about teachers, but I think like any student she would want people to know the disappointment is from someone who takes a class on “Generation Y” and it isn’t up to what she think its potential could be.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
I will just say, I’m in awe as to how many information outlets, be it sports, news, politics or other things have taken advantage of what the podcasting services on iTunes have to offer. So many outlets, National Public Radio, MSNBC, ESPN, and others have put full episode downloads of some of their favorite shows on the podcast pages of iTunes. Shows like ‘Pardon the Interruption’, ‘Countdown’, ‘Around the Horn’ and other shows are up for free downloads in their entirety, now while most of them are insanely popular, it kind of makes you wander how in the heck can they put them up for free. The answer is simple, advertisements. Dick’s Sporting Goods store has advertisements at the beginning and the end of each podcast of Pardon the Interruption, but it is so worth it to hear some of my favorite shows, especially when I cannot get to them at all times live.
Oh, hold on a sec, I have yet to cover podcasts at all in this blog, well why don’t I talk about them now? PC Magazine, has a great definition on podcasts, “An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player.” More or less it’s basically downloadable internet radio for an audio player. And because of the increase in sales of MP3 players like iPods among others, podcasting has become a staple of the new media, and I think it would be a good idea to give a few of my personal favorites out.
Monday’s
Monday’s is a humor podcast that combines discoveries on the internet along with personal experiences of the cast. The show itself used to be weekly, but it has really become a random schedule, with the last episode having been published in May. Two segments of the show ‘People Dumber than Me’ and ‘Girl’ are a pair of staples of the show. The first is humorous telling of stories of dumb criminals, much like you would find in the odd things page of a news site. The other is sort of a weekly rant by the lone female member of the group covering whatever she has found to be sort of head scratching to her. Another segment ‘Richard the Toy Boy’ takes a look at interesting objects, that may be for sale or may not be, that have made appearances on certain sites on the internet. The show itself has a tech theme as three members are computer programmers, and two of them host another podcast called ‘Dotnet Rocks’ which is actually a serious programming show.
‘Daily Source Code’
Adam Curry, who was at one time an MTV v-jay, hosts this show, updated 3 days a week, where he profiles other podcasts that are out there. He also uses this podcast as sort of a springboard for his own opinions taking on kind of a news feel. But his focus is really on the ever growing world of podcasting, as well as profiling independent, pod safe music. What is pod safe music you might ask? This type of music is actually on a site where the artists have already given those who produce podcasts, permission to use their songs in their shows, rather than with using mainstream music, having to jump through so many hoops. Curry has been referred to as the godfather of podcasting, and he is definitely at the forefront of much of the fraternity that podcasting is.
‘OtakuGeneration’
Okay, indulging my geeky side for a moment, this is a weekly anime podcast that has been going strong since June 2005. While the show has gone through sort of a revolving door of cast members, the show is still very well put together and actually a very good discussion show of various Anime series. In addition, tech news and news from what’s going on in the land of the rising sun are regular segments of the show.
In all podcasting is a new generation of on the go radio. Because the shows themselves are not bound by any overreaching oversite organizations a la the FCC, anything, and I do mean anything can be done with this particular medium. iTunes has been a huge reason podcasts have been so successful, even though many of the top podcasts on their podcast page are mainly shows from the major media providers as I said in the beginning.
Oh, hold on a sec, I have yet to cover podcasts at all in this blog, well why don’t I talk about them now? PC Magazine, has a great definition on podcasts, “An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player.” More or less it’s basically downloadable internet radio for an audio player. And because of the increase in sales of MP3 players like iPods among others, podcasting has become a staple of the new media, and I think it would be a good idea to give a few of my personal favorites out.
Monday’s
Monday’s is a humor podcast that combines discoveries on the internet along with personal experiences of the cast. The show itself used to be weekly, but it has really become a random schedule, with the last episode having been published in May. Two segments of the show ‘People Dumber than Me’ and ‘Girl’ are a pair of staples of the show. The first is humorous telling of stories of dumb criminals, much like you would find in the odd things page of a news site. The other is sort of a weekly rant by the lone female member of the group covering whatever she has found to be sort of head scratching to her. Another segment ‘Richard the Toy Boy’ takes a look at interesting objects, that may be for sale or may not be, that have made appearances on certain sites on the internet. The show itself has a tech theme as three members are computer programmers, and two of them host another podcast called ‘Dotnet Rocks’ which is actually a serious programming show.
‘Daily Source Code’
Adam Curry, who was at one time an MTV v-jay, hosts this show, updated 3 days a week, where he profiles other podcasts that are out there. He also uses this podcast as sort of a springboard for his own opinions taking on kind of a news feel. But his focus is really on the ever growing world of podcasting, as well as profiling independent, pod safe music. What is pod safe music you might ask? This type of music is actually on a site where the artists have already given those who produce podcasts, permission to use their songs in their shows, rather than with using mainstream music, having to jump through so many hoops. Curry has been referred to as the godfather of podcasting, and he is definitely at the forefront of much of the fraternity that podcasting is.
‘OtakuGeneration’
Okay, indulging my geeky side for a moment, this is a weekly anime podcast that has been going strong since June 2005. While the show has gone through sort of a revolving door of cast members, the show is still very well put together and actually a very good discussion show of various Anime series. In addition, tech news and news from what’s going on in the land of the rising sun are regular segments of the show.
In all podcasting is a new generation of on the go radio. Because the shows themselves are not bound by any overreaching oversite organizations a la the FCC, anything, and I do mean anything can be done with this particular medium. iTunes has been a huge reason podcasts have been so successful, even though many of the top podcasts on their podcast page are mainly shows from the major media providers as I said in the beginning.
Someone Busted Us on iReport
Well with my birthday, it appears that the iReport service has shown what the service can do, when put into the wrong hands. It seems some moron had the bright idea to post on the site that Apple’s headman Steve Jobs had suffered a massive heart attack. It wasn’t until a few hours later after some people had double checked with Apple, did people realize that Jobs was in fact still okay. After all of the dust had settled from the whole debacle, Apple’s stock price had reached their lowest point in over a year; they are saying that the net losses on this faux story could be up to $21 million.
The person who posted this article, someone with the handle ‘johntw’ needs to be permanently banned from the iReport section of this website. But at the same time, this drives the point home that while the Internet is a collection of instant information; it can also lead to any amount of lascivious jackasses on the Internet that will be willing to post anything just for a lame ego boost. Normally we would just look the other way with this because it would be just some teenager just acting immaturely, but with the CNN brand name attached to this story, people thought that this particular story was legit. This just goes to prove that within all of this people still need to keep their eyes open for those that won’t speak the truth, or those that will play with the truth just for an ego-boost.
The person who posted this article, someone with the handle ‘johntw’ needs to be permanently banned from the iReport section of this website. But at the same time, this drives the point home that while the Internet is a collection of instant information; it can also lead to any amount of lascivious jackasses on the Internet that will be willing to post anything just for a lame ego boost. Normally we would just look the other way with this because it would be just some teenager just acting immaturely, but with the CNN brand name attached to this story, people thought that this particular story was legit. This just goes to prove that within all of this people still need to keep their eyes open for those that won’t speak the truth, or those that will play with the truth just for an ego-boost.
iReport, CNN Gives us a chance
I figure that the best spot to probably start with this would be to talk about CNN.com’s iReport service. CNN has always been one of the many news organizations that have the most trust in America. A few years ago, CNN.com launched its iReport section of its website. What it basically entails is that people on the street, just normal Americans, are the ones that are submitting the stories that are appearing on iReport. The site offers those that browse it the ability to comment on various things. Not long ago, when Gustav hit the gulf coast and the states that occupy that area, many of the iReports had to do with the conditions that were being faced down there at that time. However, not all of the reports that get posted there are 100 percent ironclad accurate. However CNN does have a good reputation when it comes to accuracy so I am willing to at least take many of these stories at the very least, at face value.
Hello and welcome!
Welcome to the launch of ‘This Can Work’. In the coming weeks and months, possibly even years, I will be posting examples of the new media and how it can help us out in our day-to-day lives. Blogs and internet video, hereby now referred to as ‘vlogs’, have exploded over the last few years, and while some people see their use and their potential, many more people are cynical enough to believe that a lot of the stuff posted on the internet is only uninformed slop for lack of a better term. What I aim to do with my blog, is to show not only examples of how they can help, but also call out those that have abused the Internet and do not show the possible potential that the Internet has. This one post may only be an introduction, but be ready for what I am constantly working on figuring out what to write about first.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)